PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


SS: 


\    \ 


Presented    by'TCXx^a ^W^rxoXok CT^\^\A oV. 


BV  4501  .B39  1857 
Bayne,  Peter,  1830-1896. 
The  Christian  life,  social 
and  individual 


THE 


CHRISTIAN  LIFE 


SOCIAL  AND  raDIVIDUAL. 


/BY 

PETER  BAYNE,  M.  A. 


Now  we  look  upon  Chrislianity  not  as  a  power  which  has  sprung  up  out  of  the  hidden  depths  of  man's  nature,  but  as  one 
which  descended  from  above,  when  heaven  opened  itself  anew  to  man's  long  alienated  race;  a  power  which,  as  both  in  its 
origin  and  its  essence  it  is  exalted  above  all  that  human  nature  can  create  out  of  its  own  resources,  was  designed  to  impart  to 
that  nature  a  new  life,  and  to  change  it  in  its  inmost  principles.  —  Neaijdeb. 

Hold  thou  the  good  :  define  it  well : 

For  fear  divine  Philosophy 

Should  push  beyond  her  mark,  and  be 
Procuress  to  the  Lords  of  bell. 


BOSTON: 

GOULD     AND     LINCOLN, 

69    WASniNGTON    STREET. 

NEW  YORK :    SHELDON,  BLAKEMAN  &  CO. 
CINCINNATI:  GEO.  S.  BLANCIIARD. 

1857. 


PREFACE. 


In  tlie  opening  paragraphs  of  his  powerful  essay  on 
Jonathan  Edwards,  Professor  M'Dougall  remarks  on 
the  too  extensive  diffusion  of  the  idea  that  evangelical 
religion,  in  its  strict,  personal  form,  comports  ill  with 
solidity  and  compass  of  intellect.  In  a  course  of  some- 
what desultory  reading,  I  was  forcibly  struck  with  the 
prevalence  of  this  idea  in  certain  departments  of  our 
literature  ;  and  it  occurred  to  me  that  a  statement  of  the 
Christian  view  of  the  individual  character,  together 
with  a  fair  representation  of  the  practical  embodiment 
and  working  of  that  character  in  our  age,  might  not  be 
unattended  with  good.  It  was  thus  that  the  composi- 
tion of  the  following  chapters  had  origin.  With  the 
first  idea  certain  others  became  gradually  allied,  and 
especially  it  seemed  to  me  important  that  the  position 
and  worth  of  Christianity  as  a  social  and  reforming 
agency  should  be,  at  least,  in  outline,  defined.  The 
twofold  statement  and  delineation  which  I  here  attempt 
was  the  final  result. 

The  first  and  third  divisions  of  the  general  subject 
may  seem  not  to  bear  a  due  proportion  to  the  second. 
The  disproportion  is  only  apparent :  if  I  may  be  per- 
mitted to  speak  somewhat  pedantically,  the  relation  be- 
tween the  three  parts  is  that  of  stem,  foliage,  and  fruit. 


iv  PEEFACE. 

The  second  part  is  biograpliic  tliroughout :  and  in 
each  of  the  Books  into  which  it  is  divided,  the  working 
of  the  individual  Christian  life  is  intended  to  be  repre- 
sented. In  the  first  of  these,  as  I  wonld  have  it  spe- 
cially noted,  this  life  is  manifested  in  the  case  of  per- 
sons not  extremely  remarkable  in  an  intellectual  point 
of  view,  and  who  received  their  belief  in  the  Christian 
Eevelation  in  the  natural  way  in  which  an  accepted 
form  of  religion  is  transmitted  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration, not  through  argument  and  unaffected  by  intel- 
lectual doubt :  in  the  second,  it  is  exhibited  in  the 
case  of  minds  which  will  be  allowed  to  belong  to  a 
high  order,  and  in  which  the  Christian  faith  became 
finally  the  pillar  of  character,  only  after  having  been 
more  or  less  rocked  in  the  wind  of  doubt.  The  first 
may  meet  the  floating  notion  that  Christianity  is  pow- 
erless with  the  popular  mind  :  the  second,  that  it  has 
lost  its  grasp  on  thinkers. 

In  the  First  Book  of  the  Second  Part,  I  treat  also, 
though  not,  as  I  have  said,  exclusively,  of  the  mani- 
festation of  Christianity  in  social  life.  In  order  to 
unite  this  endeavor  with  the  general  biograpliic  plan  of 
the  work,  it  was  necessary  that  the  men  selected  should 
be  more  or  less  representative  of  public  movements  or 
characteristics.  They  are  so  :  yet  I  have  not  been  able 
to  attain  here  a  symmetry  to  yield  me  satisfaction.  I 
must  beg  the  reader,  however,  to  remark,  that  I  refer 
only  incidentally  to  what  is  strictly  the  national  life — 
that  which  one  nation  has  as  distinguished  from  an- 
other—and that  my  object  is  the  general  structure  of 


PREFACE.  V 

the  internal  social  economy.  A  man  in  private  life 
may  well  enough  represent  or  introduce  a  phase  of  this. 

It  was  my  idea  and  endeavor  to  represent  the  whole 
life  of  each  individual  of  whom  I  spoke.  I  think  that 
Mr.  Carlyle  has  demonstrated,  that  a  biography  can  he 
given  in  the  compass  of  a  review  article  :  his  essay  on 
Burns  I  consider,  in  the  full  signification  of  the  term, 
one  of  the  most  perfect  biographies  I  ever  looked  into  : 
and  the  highest  success  at  which  I  aimed,  in  a  literary 
point  of  view,  was  the  introduction  into  Christian  biog- 
raphy of  certain  of  the  methods  of  him  whom  I  believe 
to  be  the  greatest  biographic  writer  that  ever  lived. 
My  failure  has  been  only  not  so  complete  as  to  hide 
itself  from  my  own  eyes. 

My  relation  to  Mr.  Carlyle  is  twofold.  The  influence 
exerted  by  him  upon  my  style  and  modes  of  thought  is 
as  powerful  as  my  mind  was  capable  of  receiving : 
yet  my  dissent  from  his  opinions  is  thorough  and  total. 
I  believe  that,  without  a  grand  rectification,  his  views 
must  be  pernicious  in  their  every  influence ;  when 
Christianity  gives  them  this  rectification,  I  think 
they  convey  important  lessons  to  Christian  men  and 
Cliristian  churches.  Whether  the  streams  that  flow 
from  that  fountain  are  to  spread  bliss  or  bale,  depends 
upon  whether  there  can  be  put  into  it  a  branch  from 
the  Christian  vine  :  and  this,  since  no  better  has  at- 
tempted it,  I  endeavor  to  do. 

Let  it  not  be  thought,  however,  that  the  following 
pages  contain  nothing  but  argument.  Argument,  in- 
deed, does  not  very  much  abound.     I  endeavor  to  let 


VI  PKETACE. 

facts  speak  In  delineating  the  Christian  life,  more- 
over, one  can  never  even  approach  truthfulness,  if  he 
regards  only  one  aspect  of  character  :  Christianity,  by 
hypothesis,  makes  all  things  new. 

The  hook  is  popular  in  the  sense  that  I  desired  its 
style  to  be  such  as  would  please  all  readers :  but  I 
must  beg  to  state  that,  in  the  first  part,  I  endeavor  to 
lay  the  foundation  on  the  deepest  and  most  stable  ground. 

I  have  throughout  abstained  from  quotation  of  book 
and  page.  The  facts  I  state  in  connection  with  each 
man  of  whom  I  treat,  are  what  might  have  been  em- 
braced in  a  pretty  long  review  article.  I  state  my  obli- 
gations to  the  authors  of  the  several  biographic  works 
I  have  consulted  :  and  it  will  be  no  unimportant  result, 
if  my  essay  should  lead  to  a  wider  and  more  practical 
use  of  the  valuable  and  varied  materials  afforded  by  our 
now  rich  literature  of  Christian  biography ;  from  such 
a  reservoir,  streams  might  be  led  off  to  water  many  a 
particular  field,  and  cause  many  a  particular  crop  to  grow. 

In  my  first  chapter,  and  in  the  first  of  the  Second 
Part,  I  speak  occasionally  with  a  decision  and  succinct- 
ness which  may  seem  somewhat  assuming.  I  must  ex- 
cuse myself  by  saying,  that  I  have  almost  entirely  given 
results,  and  that  I  did  not  rashly  satisfy  myself  of  their 
soundness.  I  may  mention  that,  in  defining  the  nature 
of  happiness,  I  do  not  mean  to  assert  that  the  theory 
of  Sir  William  Hamilton  is  identical  with  that  of  But- 
ler, but  only  that  they  can  be  shown  to  harmonize. 


CONTENTS 


PLAN    OF    THE    WORK. 


PART  I.-STATEMEI(T. 

CHAPTER    I.  PAGB 

Q'he  Individual  Life, 11 

CHAPTER    II. 
The  Social  Life, 54 


PART  II.-EXPOSITIOI  AID   ILLUSTHATION, 
BOOK    ONE. 

CHEISTIANITY  THE  BASIS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE. 

CHAPTER    I. 
First  Piuxciples, 63 

CHAPTER    II. 

Howard;  axd  the  Eise  of  Philanthropy,      ....        96 

CHAPTER    III. 

"Wilberforce  ;  and  the  Development  op  PhilaitthrDpt,        .      158 

CHAPTER    IV. 
Budgett;  the  Christian  Freeman, 206 


Vin  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER    V.  P^oE 

The  Social   Problesi  op  the  Age;   and  one  or  two  Hints 
TOWARD  its  Solution, 246 

BOOK   TWO. 

CHEISTIANITY    THE   BASIS   OF  INDIVIDUAL    CHAEACTEE. 

CHAPTER    I. 

Introductory:  A  Eew  Words  on  Modern  Doubt,         .       .      291 

CHAPTER    II. 
John  Foster, 303 

CHAPTER    III. 
Thomas  Arnold, 36t 

CHAPTER    IV. 
Thomas  Chalmers, 403 


PART   III.-OUTLOOK. 

CHAPTER    I. 
The  Positive' Philosopht, 4.83 

CHAPTER    II. 

Pantheistic  Spiritualism, -      ,       ,      503 

CHAPTER    III. 
General  Conclusion, 515 


PART    OJ^E. 


STATEMENT 


CHAPTER    I 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE, 


In  perusing  The  Tale  of  Goethe,  a  piece  which  is  wonderful 
even  among  the  works  of  that  supreme  literary  artist,  and 
which  his  worthy  exponent  and  interpreter,  Mr.  Carlyle,  has 
deemed,  no  doubt  with  perfect  correctness,  a  picture,  in  the, 
colors  indeed  of  fantasy  and  dream,  yet,  to  the  seeing  eye,  no- 
wise indefinite,  of  the  whole  future,  attention  can  scarce  fail  to 
be  arrested  by  the  destiny  there  appointed  for  the  Christian 
religion.  In  the  Temple  of  the  Future,  the  little  hut  of  the 
fisherman,  to  which  former  and  darker  generations  had  looked 
for  aid  in  every  great  emergency  of  existence,  still  found  a 
place.  The  light  of  reason  entering  in  breathed  through  it  a 
new  life  and  an  immortal  beauty.  "  By  virtue  of  the  Lamp 
locked  up  in  it,  the  hut  had  been  converted  from  the  inside  to 
the  outside  into  solid  silver.  Ere  long,  too,  its  form  changed ; 
for  the  noble  metal  shook  aside  the  accidental  shape  of  planks, 
posts,  and  beams,  and  stretched  itself  out  into  a  noble  case  of 
beaten  ornamented  workmanship.  Thus  a  fair  little  temple 
stood  erected  in  the  middle  of  the  large  one ;  or,  if  you  will, 
an  altar  worthy  of  the  temple."  The  whole  passage,  of  which 
this  forms  a  part,  is  perhaps  the  finest  illustration  to  be  found 
of  a  certain  wide-spread  and  multiform  intellectual  phenome- 


12  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

non  of  our  time.  In  the  higher  walks  of  modern  literature, 
an  attitude  is  not  unfrequently  assumed  toward  Christianity 
which,  in  these  ages  at  least,  is  new.  It  is  concluded  by  the 
serene  worshiper  of  reason  or  of  man,  that  the  Christian  re- 
ligion may  now  be  treated  with  that  polite  and  complimentary 
tolerance  with  which  a  generous  victor  treats  the  distinguished 
prisoner  whose  sword  he  has  hung  on  the  side  of  his  tent. 
We  are  told  that  Christianity  is  the  highest  thing  man  has 
"  done,"  that  it  is  the  purest  of  earthly  religions,  that  it  has 
given  voice  to  the  deepest  emotions  in  the  human  breast. 
Language,  which  reaches  the  gorgeousness,  and  force,  and 
sweetness  of  poetry,  has  been  woven  into  wreaths  to  crown 
it ;  intellect,  which,  in  the  width  of  its  domain  and  the  great- 
ness of  its  might,  suggests  comparison  with  the  central  power 
/of  imperial  Eome,  has  shrined  it  in  a  temple,  or  offered  it  a 
vassal  throne.  And  how  are  Christians  bound  to  receive  the 
haughty  condescension  of  all  this  praise  1  They  are  not  left 
without  an  example  by  which  to  shape  their  conduct;  their 
fathers  taught  them  how  to  act  in  still  more  trying  circum- 
stances. We  have  not  forgot  the  ancient  offers,  tacit  or  ex- 
press, which  were  made  to  the  religion  of  Jesus,  and  the 
wrath  which  awoke  on  their  rejection.  It  might  have  obtained 
a  seat  on  Olympus,  a  niche  in  the  Pantheon  of  the  ancient 
world ;  it  might  have  sheltered  itself  under  the  wide  wings, 
dropping  gold  and*  manna,  of  the  Eoman  eagles.  That  the 
Crucified  of  Judea  should  be  deemed  mightier  than  the  Jupiter 
of  the  Capitol,  that  the  words  of  a  few  fishermen  were  to  be 
esteemed  more  worthily  than  the  ancient  voice  of  the  Sybil, 
and  the  mystic  whisperings  of  a  thousand  sacred  groves ;  this 
astonished  and  incensed  the  Pagan  world,  this  cut  to  the  heart 
the  pride  of  Rome.  But  the  declaration  of  the  smitten  Gali- 
leans was  explicit  and  unchanging :   the  Gospel  of  Jesus  is 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  13 

every  thing  or  nothing ;  if  true  at  all,  every  god  and  oracle 
must  absolutely  vanish  before  it.  Our  answer  now  can  be  no 
other  than  that  given  of  old.  Christianity  either  lives  a  divine 
life  or  dies ;  until  the  concession  is  made  that  it  is  divine,  in 
no  qualified  sense  but  to  the  express  intent  that  it  came  down 
from  Heaven,  no  a2')proximation  is  made  to  what  it  demands. 
It  will  not  enter  that  temple,  arrayed,  as  it  is,  in  the  still  ar- 
tisic  beauty  of  Greece,  which  Goethe  has  reared  for  it;  it 
either  fades  utterly,  or  that  temple  crumbles  into  the  dust 
before  it. 

There  are  but  three  hypotheses  on  the  subject  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  Divine  Being,  and  our  relation  to  Him,  which  in 
our  time  deserve  attention  ;  those  of  atheism,  pantheism,  and 
monotheism.  Of  the  first  of  these,  we  do  not  now  speak. 
The  tone  of  unbelieving  tolerance  to  which  we  have  just  re- 
ferred, is  used  chiefly  by  the  disciples  of  that  great  school  of 
pantheism  which  originated  in  Germany  in  the  last  century, 
and  the  ramifications  of  whose  influence,  more  or  less  dis- 
guised and  modified,  we  think  we  can  detect  very  widely  in  our 
present  literature.  Its  prmcipal  philosophic  representative  in 
Germany  was  Fichte  ;  its  greatest  embodiment  in  our  country 
is  in  the  works  of  ^fr.  Carlyle.  The  former  of  these  may 
be  called  its  originator,  although  it  is  our  strong  impression 
from  what  we  know  of  the  Kantian  philosophy,  and  from  the 
fact  that  Fichte  was  at  first  a  disciple  of  Kant,  that  its  original 
suggestion  was  found  in  the  self-contained  and  self-suflicicnt 
law,  the  categorical  imperative,  of  that  philosopher.  We  do 
not  intend  to  enter  upon  the  exposition  of  this  pantheism. 
We  consider  it  now  in  one  point  of  view,  in  application  to  one 
problem ;  and  we  mean  to  evolve  the  essential  points  of  its  so- 
lution of  this  problem,  in  contrast  with  that  which  we  purpose 
briefly  to  sketch,  the  solution  offered  by  Christianity.     This 


14  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

problem  is  the  formation  of  individual  character,  or  rather  the 
procm'ing  for  its  formation  a  vital  principle  and  solid  basis. 

Long  and  careful  study  of  the  works  of  Fichte  and  Mr. 
Carlyle  give  us  assured  confidence  in  defining  the  essential 
starting-point  and  characteristic  of  Fichtean  pantheism.  It  is 
its  assertion  of  the  divinity  of  man.  This  is  of  course  broad 
and  explicit  in  the  philosophy  of  Fichte.  It  is  not  so  clear 
and  definite  in  the  works  of  Mr.  Carlyle ;  that  great  writer, 
although  giving  evidence  of  a  powerful  influence  from  Fichte, 
having  experienced  one  still  more  powerful  from  Goethe,  and 
having  clothed  his  doctrines,  not  in  the  statuesque  exactitude 
of  philosophic  terminology,  but  in  the  living  language  of  men. 
It  were,  however,  we  think,  difficult  to  conceive  a  more  per- 
fectly worked-out  scheme  of  pantheism,  in  application  to 
practical  life,  than  that  with  which  Mr.  Carlyle  has  furnished 
us,  and  its  essential  principle  ever  is,  the  glory,  the  worship, 
the  divinity  of  man.  In  our  general  literature,  the  principle 
we  have  enunciated  undergoes  modification,  and  for  the  most 
part,  is  by  no  means  expressed  as  pantheism.  We  refer  to 
that  spirit  of  self-assertion,  which  lies  so  deep  in  what  may 
be  called  the  religion  of  literature ;  to  that  wide-spread  ten- 
dency to  regard  all  reform  of  the  individual  man  as  being  an 
evolution  of  some  hidden  nobleness,  or  an  appeal  to  a  perfect 
internal  light  or  law,  together  with  what  may  be  called  the 
worship  of  genius,  the  habit  of  nourishing  all  hope  on  the 
manifestation  of  "the  divine,"  by  gifted  individuals.  We 
care  not  how  this  last  remarkable  characteristic  of  the  time 
be  defined  ;  to  us  its  connection  with  pantheism,  and  more  or 
less  close  dependence  on  the  teaching  of  that  of  Germany, 
seem  plain,  but  it  is  enough  that  we  discern  in  it  an  influence 
definably  antagonistic  to  the  spirit  of  Christianity. 

The  great  point  to  be  established  against  pantheism,  and 


•THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  15 

that  from  which  all  else  follows,  is  the  separate  existence  of  a 
Divine  Being.  We  shall  glance  at  the  evidence  of  this  in  one 
of  its  principal  departments — a  department  in  which,  we  thmk, 
there  is  important  work  to  be  done — that  of  conscience. 

There  has  appeared,  in  a  recent  theological  work,  what  we 
must  be  bold  to  call  a  singularly  shallow  and  inaccurate  criti- 
cism of  Butler's  doctrine  of  conscience.  It  has  been  spoken  of 
as  depending  on  "  probable"  evidence,  and  certain  problems 
which  it  enables  us  to  solve  are  alluded  to  as  momentous  or 
insuperable  difficulties.  The  former  of  these  assertions  seems 
to  us  plainly  to  amount  to  an  absolute  abandonment  of  what 
Butler  has  done,  to  a  reduction  of  it  to  a  nonentity  or  a  guess. 
As  Mackintosh  distinctly  asserts,  and  as  might  be  shown  by 
overpowering  evidence,  his  argument  is  based  on  the  "  unassail- 
able" ground  of  consciousness — on  that  evidence  which  is  the 
strongest  we  can  obtain.  Even  the  author  of  the  Disserta- 
tion, however,  has  fallen  into  palpable  error  in  treating  of 
Butler ;  and  we  must  quote  the  following  clauses  from  him, 
both  to  expose  their  inaccuracy  and  to  indicate  wherein  con- 
sist that  defmiteness  and  that  precision  which  the  author  to 
w^hom  we  first  referred  desiderates  in  Butler's  masterly  demon- 
stration : — "  The  most  palpable  defect  of  Butler's  scheme  is, 
that  it  affords  no  answer  to  the  question,  '  What  is  the  dis- 
tinguishing quality  common  to  all  right  actions  V  If  it  were 
answered,  '  Their  criterion  is,  that  they  are  approved  and  com- 
manded by  conscience,'  the  answerer  would  find  that  he  was 
involved  in  a  vicious  circle;  for  conscience  itself  could  be  no 
otherwise  defined  than  as  the  faculty  which  approves  and  com- 
mands right  actions." 

Let  us  hear  Butler : — "  That  your  conscience  approves  of 
and  attests  to  such  a  course  of  action,  is  itself  alone  an  obliga- 
tion.    Conscience  does  not  only  offer  itself  to  show  us  the  way 


16  THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE. 

we  should  walk  in,  but  it  likewise  carries  its  own  authority 
with  it,  that  it  is  our  natural  guide,"  &c. 

This  is  quite  sufficient.  The  supposed  circle  of  Mackintosh 
is  at  once  broken.  To  the  question,  What  is  the  distinguish- 
ing quality  common  to  all  right  actions  ?  our  answer  is  ex- 
plicit :  The  distinguishing  quality  is,  that  they  are  approved 
and  commanded  by  conscience ;  and,  we  add,  the  word  "  right" 
is  that  by  which,  in  common  speech,  the  common  conscious- 
ness recognizes  them  to  be  thus  approved  and  commanded. 
To  the  question.  What,  then,  is  conscience  ?  we  answer.  Not  a 
faculty  which  approves  and  commands  right  actions,  as  if  they 
were  right  before,  and  were  enforced  for  some  outlying 
reason,  but  one  which  claims  a  power,  whether  original  or 
derived,  to  set  apart  certain  actions,  and  stamping  them  with 
its  approval,  constitute  them  right. 

In  one  sentence,  we  think,  we  can  sum  up  what  Butler  has 
done  in  this  all-important  matter.  His  doctrine  simply  is, 
that,  by  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind,  the  essential 
characteristic  of  conscience  is  its  power  supreme  among  the 
faculties  to  adjudicate  on  actions ;  that  the  man  who  calmly 
interrogates  consciousness,  finds  its  declaration  explicit,  to  the 
effect  that  refusal  to  obey  the  dictate  of  conscience  is  a  denial 
of  his  nature. 

Does  this  imply  that  man,  by  obeying  conscience,  becomes 
infallible  ?  On  no  conceivable  hypothesis.  It  is  right,  in  a 
matter  of  inductive  reasoning,  to  consult  the  logical  faculty, 
and  not  the  imagination ;  a  man  who  substitutes  the  fantastic 
Jimning  of  the  latter,  beautiful  indeed  in  its  place  and  time, 
for  the  substantial  chain-work  of  the  former,  outrages  his 
nature.  But  do  we  therefore  say  that  the  understanding  errs 
not  in  the  search  for  truth  %  or  do  we  consider  the  fact  that  it 
does  often  and  grievously  fail  an  argument  for  discarding  it 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  17 

from  its  office,  and  giving  the  place  to  some  other  faculty  1 
Precisely  so  is  it  with  conscience.  The  theory  of  its  legiti- 
mate supremacy  asserts  not  that  it  does  not  err ;  but  it  affirms 
that,  in  all  circumstances,  it  is  the  faculty  to  decide  on  duty. 
Wc  hold  this  precisely  with  the  same  degree  of  tenacity  with 
which  M'e  hold  the  conviction  that,  though  reason  may  err,  in- 
tellectual skepticism  is  intellectual  suicide :  conscience  may 
not  be  infallible,  but  rejection  of  its  authority  is  moral  skepti 
cism,  that  is,  moral  death.  Butler  shows  the  highest  point  on 
which  man  can  stand,  in  order,  with  his  unaided  powers,  to 
see  God ;  but  can  we  for  a  moment  allege,  that  the  author  of 
the  Analogy  did  not  perceive  the  fact  that  this  is  but  climbing 
to  the  top  of  a  ruined  tower,  and  that,  though  from  its  head 
we  can  see  farther  than  from  the  plain  below,  the  only  hope 
for  man  is,  that,  gazing  thence,  he  may  see  the  dawning  of  the 
Sun  of  Righteousness  ? 

The  above  is,  strictly  speaking,  all  that  Butler  has  done. 
The  distinct  and  verbal  testimony  he  bears  to  the  fact  that 
conscience  naturally  refers  to  God,  is  in  itself  of  great  value ; 
but  it  is  of  the  nature  of  a  testimony,  not  a  proof;  it  has  all 
the  weight  that  the  deliverance  of  the  individual  consciousness 
of  one  of  the  clearest  and  strongest  thinkers  that  ever  lived 
must  be  allowed  to  possess,  but  this  is  very  far  from  equiva- 
lent to  a  demonstrative  dictum  of  the  universal  consciousness. 
Morality  he  demonstrated  :  to  godliness  he  bore  witness. 

The  numerous  expressions  of  agreement  with  Butler  in  his 
belief  that  conscience  naturally  spoke  from  God,  can  not  be 
considered,  more  than  his  own,  as  constituting  any  such  proof 
of  the  point  as  he  offers  for  the  supremacy  of  the  moral 
faculty.  Dr.  Chalmers,  perhaps  the  ablest  of  the  writers  who 
have  thus  recorded  their  assent,  does,  to  an  important  extent, 
suggest  the  mode  and  indicate  the  materials  of  this  proof;  his 


18  THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE. 

refeience  to  the  phenomena  of  remorse  and  self-complacency 
is  a  very  valuable  hint ;  and  his  assertion  of  the  fact  that  con- 
science points  to  the  being  of  God  as  "with  the  speed  of 
lightning,"  shows  at  least  what  has  to  be  proved ;  but  even  he 
makes  no  stated  attempt  to  connect  the  truth  he  asserts  with 
the  consciousness  of  the  race,  and  thus  vindicate  for  it  a  place 
in  that  fortress  whose  assailing  is  the  assailing  of  the  possi- 
bility of  truth.  Perhaps  the  greatest  achievement  now  possi- 
ble in  ethics  is  to  connect  indissolubly  with  the  universal  con- 
sciousness the  fact  that  the  moral  faculty  speaks  by  a  delegated 
authority. 

We  shall  not  pretend  here  to  draw  out  the  demonstration 
which  we  believe  to  be  possible.  We  shall  merely  offer  two 
considerations,  without  fully  unfolding  either.  We  think  that 
the  second  admits  of  being  shown  to  be  of  itself  conclusive. 

I.  The  human  consciousness,  as  revealing  itself  in  history, 
has  borne  witness  to  the  fact  that  it  is  natural  for  man  not  to 
regard  the  voice  of  conscience  as  final.  We  here  point  to  no 
particular  system  of  belief ;  we  care  not  even  though  the  name 
of  the  religion  was  pantheism.  We  point  simply  to  that  one 
fact,  whose  exhibition  seems  co-extensive  with  history,  that 
the  human  race  has  not  worshiped  itself.  There  has  ever 
been  manifested  an  irresistible  conviction  that  the  phenomena 
of  conscience  were  knit  by  a  whole  system  of  relations  to 
somewhat  beyond  and  external  to  the  breast ;  that  their  mean- 
ing and  efRcacy  were  thus  essentially  affected.  Did  remorse 
cause  the  soul  to  writhe  in  hidden  anguish '?  The  hecatomb 
was  straightway  piled,  the  altar  smoked :  some  extemnl 
power  believed  capable,  in  what  way  soever,  of  sending  forth 
a  gentle  wind  to  calm  and  cool  the  troubled  spirit,  was  ap- 
pealed to.  Did  a  feeling  of  mild  satisfaction  breathe  through 
the  breast,  in  the  consciousness  of  duty  performed  or  noble- 


TME     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  10 

ness  evinced  ?  The  present  reward  was  not  deemed  exhaust- 
ive. Before  the  eye,  resting  afar,  as  on  the  still  evening  hori- 
zon of  a  troubled  day,  there  beamed  out  softly  the  Elysian 
fields,  with  their  tranquil  rivers,  on  whose  banks  rested  heroes, 
and  their  unfading  flowers  that  breathed  balm  odors  through 
the  cloudless  air.  Every  Pagan  nation  has  had  its  mythology, 
and  each  mythology  is  essentially  an  attempt  of  the  mind  to 
shape  out  in  visible  form  the  several  relations  in  which  it 
believes  itself  to  be  joined  with  some  external  but  invisible 
power.  In  one  word,  the  conception  of  man  as  self-complete, 
as  all  in  all  to  himself,  as  his  own  God,  has  been  in  all  ages 
foreign  to  the  mind  of  the  race ;  perhaps  of  no  phenomenon 
could  it  be  more  confidently  asserted  that  it  is  a  universal 
habit  of  mankind,  than  of  the  tendency  to  associate  internal 
monitions  vnth.  some  great  external  reality  or  realities. 

II.  Tliis  seems  to  be  a  necessary  and  demonstrable  case  of 
the  action  of  the  great  mental  law  by  which  a  cause  is  de- 
manded for  every  efifect.  As  if  impressed  by  God  with  a 
necessity  of  bearing  testimony  to  His  existence,  every  thing 
within  the  realm  of  finitude,  from  Arcturus  and  the  Pleiades 
to  the  tiny  moss  that  clings  to  the  ruined  wall,  presents  itself 
to  us  with  an  irresistible  power  to  compel  reference  to  a 
cause.  If  we  are  to  retain  faith  in  mind,  we  must  believe 
that,  in  the  region  of  the  finite,  this  urgent  necessity  has  a 
significance.  Now,  if  the  voice  of  the  moral  faculty  is  heard 
by  the  human  soul  as  final,  it  is  the  one  phenomenon  within 
the  bounds  of  conception  which  claims  exemption  from  this 
law ;  it  alone  breaks  the  bonds  of  finitude.  No  such  exemp- 
tion can  be  pleaded ;  as  surely  as  a  monition  of  conscience  is 
a  phenomenon,  so  surely  does  it  impel  the  human  mind  to 
seek  its  cause.  The  great  historical  fact  we  noted  is  thus  at 
once  confirmed  and  explained.     It  is  seen  that  it  was  a  resist- 


20  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

less  necessity  which  in  all  ages  urged  the  human  mind  to  seek 
its  Deity  without.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  go  further.  We 
think  it  would  admit  of  being  shown  that  the  law  here  acts  in 
its  most  express  form,  and  with  clearest  suggestion  of  intent. 
All  nature  bears  the  stamp  of  its  Maker ;  but  conscience 
names  His  very  name. 

The  above  proofs,  we  are  well  assured,  admit  of  being  elab 
orated  into  an  irrefragable  demonstration,  that  consciousnes: 
teaches  us  to  refer  the  commands  of  the  moral  faculty  to  an 
external  authority ;  and  if  this  is  so,  it  will  not  be  disputed 
that  there  is  but  One  authority  to  which  they  can  be  thus 
referred.  We  conclude,  then,  that  the  doctrine  of  the  dele- 
gated nature  of  conscience  is  grounded  on  evidence,  of  simi- 
lar nature  and  like  conclusiveness  with  that  of  its  supremacy 
among  our  faculties :  godliness  is  natural  to  man  in  the 
same  sense  as  morality. 

Pantheism  is  a  theory  of  God,  man,  and  the  universe, 
which  can  not  be  denied  to  contain  elements  of  great  sublim- 
ity ;  atheism  can  say  nothing  of  the  world,  but  that,  for  the 
living,  it  is  a  workshop,  and  for  the  dead  a  grave ;  nothing  of 
the  soul  of  man,  but  that  it  is  the  action  of  organism,  and 
that  the  possibility  of  its  separate  existence  is  a  dream  ;  but 
pantheism,  whether  delusively  or  not,  and  at  least  in  its  pop- 
ular representations,  admits  a  theory  of  the  world  which  is 
sublime,  and  a  theory  of  man  which  is  exalted.  When 
clothed  in  the  chastened  beauty  of  the  language  of  Fichte,  or 
wrapped  in  the  poetic  gorgeousness  of  that  of  Carlyle,  these 
can  scarce  fail  to  awake  enthusiasm  ;  and  it  is  when,  with  ex- 
press intention  or  not,  such  writers  cast  a  passing  glance  of 
contempt  on  the  apparently  dead  and  rigid  universe  of  one 
who  refuses  to  say  that  the  All  is  God,  that  an  entrance  is  apt 
to  be  found  for  those  general  modes  of  thought  which  are  of 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  21 

the  nature  of  pantheism.  It  were  well,  therefore,  to  look 
fairly  in  the  face  the  express  or  tacit  assumption  of  the  pan- 
theist; to  contrast,  with  all  impartiality  and  calmness,  his 
universe  and  his  God  with  those  of  the  Christian. 

Ye  make  the  great  All  a  machine,  say  the  pantheists,  a  dead 
piece  of  very  superior  mechanism ;  the  tree  Igdrasil  of  the 
old  Norsemen  was  better  than  that ;  to  look  on  the  universe 
as  godlike  and  god,  how  mfinitely  better  is  that  ?  Let  us 
consider.  One  mighty  tide  of  force  filling  immensity,  its 
waves,  galaxies  and  systems,  its  foam  sparkling  with  worlds, 
one  immeasurable  ocean  of  life,  swelling  in  endless  billows 
through  immensity  at  its  own  vast,  vague  will ;  such  is  at  once 
the  universe  and  the  God  of  pantheism.  The  pantheist  is 
himself  one  little  conscious  drop  in  the  boundless  tide,  in.  the 
all-embracing  infinite.  In  the  branching  of  the  stars,  this 
infinite  rushes  out ;  in  the  little  flower  at  your  feet,  it  lives. 
In  all  the  embodying  of  human  thought — in  the  rearing  of  na- 
tions and  politics,  in  the  building  of  towered  cities,  in  the 
warring  and  trading  of  men — it  finds  a  dim  garment ;  in  the 
beauties,  and  grandeurs,  and  terrors  of  all  mythologies — the 
grave  look  of  the  Olympian  King,  the  still  and  stainless 
beauty  of  the  woodland  Naiad,  the  bright  glance  of  the  son 
of  Latona,  the  thunder-brows  of  Thor,  the  dawn  smile  of 
Balder — it  is  more  clearly  seen ;  the  beauty  which  is  the  soul 
of  art — the  majesty  that  lives  from  age  to  age  in  the  stotue 
of  Phidias,  the  smile  that  gladdens  the  eyes  of  many  genera- 
tions on  the  perfect  lip  and  in  the  pure  eye  of  a  Madonna  by 
Raphael — is  its  very  self.  You  may  look  at  it,  you  may,  by 
effort  of  thought,  endeavor  to  evolve  it  within  you ;  but  the 
drop  holds  no  converse  with  the  ocean,  the  great  rolling  sea 
hears  not  the  little  ripple  on  its  shore ;  you  can  hold  no  con- 
verse or  communion  with  your  God ;  your  highest  bliss  is  to 


22  THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE. 

cease  individually  to  be,  to  sink  into  imconscious,  everlasting 
trance.  What,  now,  do  we  behold,  when  we  turn,  with  un- 
sandaled  foot,  to  look  upon  the  universe  and  the  God  of 
Christianity  ?  An  immensity,  to  the  bounds  of  which,  urge 
them  never  so  wildly,  the  steeds  of  thought  shall  never 
pierce,  thronged  with  ordered  myriads  of  worlds,  all  willed 
into  existence  and  ever  upheld  by  a  Being,  of  whom  tongue 
can  not  speak  or  mind  conceive,  but  who  lit  the  torch  of  rea- 
son, who  hears  the  voice  of  man,  and  whose  attributes  are 
dimly  mirrored  in  the  human  soul.  Endeavor  to  embrace 
the  universe  in  thy  conception;  let  thought  take  to  it  the 
wings  of  imagination,  and  imagination  open  the  oceanic  eye 
of  contemplation ;  view  this  stupendous  illimitable  whole. 
Then  conceive  God  infinitely  above  it ;  filling  it  all  with  His 
light,  as  the  sun  fills  with  its  light  the  dewdrop  ;  as  distinct 
from  it  as  the  sun  is  from  the  dewdrop  ;  to  whom  the  count- 
less worlds  of  immensity  are  as  the  primary  particles  of 
water  composing  the  dewdrop  are  to  the  sun.  Then  add  this 
thought:  that  He,  around  whose  throne  the  morning  stars 
for  ever  sing,  to  whom  anthems  of  praise  from  all  the  star- 
choirs  of  immensity  go  toning  on  eternally  from  galaxy  to 
galaxy,  hears  the  evening  hymn  of  praise  in  the  Christian 
home,  the  lowly  melody  in  the  Christian  heart,  the  sigh  of  the 
kneeling  child ;  and,  when  the  little  task  of  his  morning  so- 
journ on  earth  is  over,  will  draw  up  the  Christian,  as  the  sun 
draws  up  the  dewdrop,  to  rest  on  the  bosom  of  infinite  Love. 
Such  is  the  universe,  and  such  the  God  of  the  Christian,  in 
what  faint  and  feeble  words  we  can  image  the  conceptions. 
Is  the  universe  of  pantheism  more  sublime  than  this  ? 

We  must,  however,  pause.  We  have,  in  the  preceding  sen- 
♦^ences,  not  unallowably  conformed  to  those  general  ideas  of 
God  which  must  float  in  the  general  intellect.     But  in  order 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  23 

to  show  what  Christianity  here  affords  us,  we  must  endeavor 
to  define,  with  briefness,  but  precision,  the  ultimate  idea  of 
God  at  which  philosophy  can  arrive.  We  shall  not  enter  into 
any  proof  of  the  fact,  that  the  human  mind  can  not  conceive 
the  infinite ;  that  the  sphere  of  thought  is  limited  by  the  rela- 
tive, the  conditioned.  We  assume  this  point,  or  rather  we 
accept  regarding  it,  as  what  may  now  be  considered  final,  Sir 
William  Hamilton's  demonstration.  We  shall  agree  with  the 
declarations  on  this  subject,  which  he  cites  as  those  of  a 
"  pious  philosophy  :" — "  A  God  understood  would  be  no  God 
at  all ;"  "  To  think  that  God  is,  as  we  think  Him  to  be,  is 
blasphemy."  The  general  intellect  of  the  race  has  always 
sought  for,  and  believed  in,  supernal  power ;  this  grand  charac- 
teristic may  be  affirmed  of  all  nations  and  ages ;  if  some 
appearance  of  exception  has  been  presented,  it  has  been  by  no 
means  of  an  extent  or  nature  to  invalidate  the  general  evi- 
dence. This  belief,  however,  has  been  either  instinctive  and 
imperfect  or  blind ;  either  accepted  at  the  instinctive  bidding 
of  those  laws  which  will  not  permit  man  to  consider  phenom- 
ena causeless,  and  finitude  final,  or  the  faint  echoes  received 
without  question  or  examination,  of  an  original  revelation. 
The  general  idea  formed  in  all  ages  of  the  Divine,  has  ad- 
mitted of  being  analyzed  into  two  components ;  a  personality 
either  human,  or  strictly  analogous  to  that  of  man,  and  a  sup- 
plement of  human  power,  beauty,  and  wisdom,  by  more  or 
less  skillful  borrowing  from  those  examples  of  force,  loveli- 
ness, or  design,  which  are  manifested  in  nature,  and  were 
recognised  to  transcend  human  attainment.  But  as  civilization 
advanced,  and  thought  began  to  appear,  the  popular  conceptions 
of  divinity  were  submitted  to  philosophic  examination,  and 
proved  to  be  unsatisfactory.  To  avoid  detailed  explanation, 
we  shall  say,  in  general  terms,  that  philosophy,  after  careful 


24  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

examination,  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  the  origin  of  the 
finite  could  not  be  found  within  the  region  of  finitude.  The 
theory  that  the  sun  was  not  altogether  without  a  cause,  but 
that  it  formed  the  chariot  of  an  ever-youthful  god,  whose  smile 
was  the  sunshine  that  yellowed  the  corn,  whose  anger  was  the 
drought  that  occasioned  famine,  that  the  deep  roll  of  the  thunder 
amid  the  folds  of  the  black  cloud  was  not  self  originating,  but 
was  amply  accounted  for  as  the  rattling  of  the  wheels  of  the 
awful  Jove ;  that  the  beauty  of  sea-foam,  and  rainbow,  and  rose- 
bud, and  vine-cluster,  and  bewitching  eye  and  cheek,  and  lip,  was 
no  sport  of  accident,  no  uncaused  fantastic  play  over  the  face 
of  nature,  but  the  cunning  work  of  a  goddess  who  embodied 
the  beautiful,  might  hush  any  half-expressed  questioning  of  the 
rude  popular  mind,  but  could  nowise  satisfy  reason.  Even 
the  general  intellect,  when  it  at  all  engaged  in  reflection,  found 
this  first  series  of  answers  insufficient ;  that  sun-god,  that  Jove, 
that  Venus,  the  whole  magnificent  company  that  sat  in  thrones 
over  the  unstained  snow  of  Olympus — whence  came  they"? 
There  arose  theories  to  account  for  their  origin  ;  if  the  keen 
piercing  human  mind  would  not  rest  contented  with  this  fair 
vision,  if  the  finite  attribute  of  multiplicity  pained  and  im- 
pelled it,  an  older  mythology  was  seen,  or  fancied  to  emerge, 
venerable  Saturn,  and  Hyperion  the  giant  of  the  sun,  and 
hoary  Ocean,  and  the  whole  Titan  brotherhood ;  and,  if  even 
this  satisfied  not,  all  might  be  referred  to  the  primal  two. 
Heaven  and  Earth,  or  even  they  might  be  placed  at  the  foot 
of  an  ultimate  and  immovable  Eate.  At  this  last  stage,  the 
reflections  of  the  popular  mind  came  nearly  into  coincidence 
with  philosophy*  This,  as  we  said,  passing  beyond  polythe- 
istic notions  arrived  at  the  original,  unconditioned,  inscrutable 
one.  This  was  the  critical  moment.  Was  the  fact  that  the 
Divine  could  not  be  comprehended  and  defined  by  the  human 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  25 

mind  to  be  taken  as  an  evidence  of  its  non-existence,  or  was  a 
Divine,  thus  inscrutable,  to  be  received  1  That  philosophic 
intellect  which  we  deem  the  noblest  and  most  sublime,  to 
which  the  belief  in  a  God  was  a  necessity,  held  by  the  second 
alternative,  whether  by  accepting,  with  subtle  yet  sublime 
self-deception,  the  product  of  imagination  for  the  affirmation 
of  reason,  or  by  devising  some  new  faculty,  whose  voice  was 
conclusive  in  the  matter,  and  calling  it  faith ;  thus,  we  may 
boldly  assert  did  Plato  in  Greece,  and  Fichte  in  Germany  ; 
that  philosophic  intellect  which  could  consent  to  abandon 
belief  in  man's  spiritual  existence,  and  in  an  unseen  govern- 
ment of  the  world,  lapsed  into  atheism ;  this  was  perhaps  the 
result  of  the  Aristotelian  philosophy  in  ancient  times,  and  has 
been  the  avowed  goal  of  the  modern  positive  philosophy. 
And  thus  we  are  enabled  to  shut  up  forever  the  pahtheistio 
theory  of  God  and  man,  against  which  we  now  especially  con- 
tend, in  one  dumb  negation ;  to  use  again  the  words  of  Sir 
William  Hamilton,  "  the  All"  evolved  by  "  the  scheme  of 
pantheistic  omniscience,"  "  at  the  first  exorcism  of  a  rigorous 
interrogation,  relapses  into  nothing."  We  are  not  here  re- 
quired to  have  recourse  to  inference ;  in  the  work  which 
embodies  Fichte's  theory  of  practical  things,  his  Way  to  the 
Blessed  Life,  we  find  his  ultimate  expression  for  the  Divine 
Being  to  be  "  the  pure  negation  of  all  conceivability  associated 
with  infmitc  and  eternal  lovableness."  We  need  scarce 
observe  that  this  lovableness  is  a  condition  and  conceiva- 
bility violating,  as  absolutely  as  would  a  thousand  attributes 
and  qualities,  that  character  of  the  one  being,  upon  which  he 
so  strenuously  insists,  that  it  is  the  absolute,  immutable, 
unconditioned  one.  Of  all  that  conception  of  the  Divine, 
which,  by  his  aid,  and  using  his  colors,  we  have  endeavored  to 
body  forth,  we  may  just  say  that,  by  the  original  axiom  of  his 

2 


26  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE 

own  philosophy,  it  is  annihilated ;  proved  to  be  either  a  mere 
play  of  imagination,  or  the  common  ideas  and  representations 
of  God,  highly  colored  and  refined. 

We  turn  to  Christianity.  The  Bible,  by  many  and  explicit 
declarations,  affirms,  that  God  can  not,  in  essence,  be  known 
to  man ;  by  no  searching  can  Jehovah  be  found  out  unto 
perfection;  He  is  the  I  AM  whom  no  eye  hath  seen  or 
can  see.  But  He  is  not  altogether  an  unknown  God ;  when 
Paul  professed,  before  the  Athenian  sages,  his  ability  to  reveal 
to  them  Him  whom  they  had  ignorantly  worshiped,  he  made 
no  vain  boast.  Omitting  express  allusion  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity,  we  may  say  that,  in  a  twofold  manner,  God  is 
thus  revealed,  and  we  are  enabled  to  approach  unto  Him : 
first,  by  a  divine  intimation  that  man  is  formed  in  the  image 
of  God ;  and,  second,  by  the  incarnation  of  the  Godhead  in 
the  man  Christ  Jesus.  Ife  is  our  present  object  to  inquire 
what  is  thus  obtained,  not  to  adduce  the  evidence  by  which 
Christianity  proves  itself  divinely  empowered  to  afford  it : 
we  merely  remark,  in  passing,  that,  since  it  came  to  supply 
what  reason,  by  hypothesis,  fails  to  achieve,  to  save  man,  on 
the  one  hand,  from  blank  atheism,  and,  on  the  other,  from 
blind  faith  or  imaginative  delusion,  it  was  to  be  expected  that 
its  fundamental  attestation  would  embrace  somewhat  out  of 
the  sphere  of  natural  law  and  ordinary  induction,  in  other 
words,  be  miraculous.  By  declaring,  with  a  divine  sanction, 
that  man  was  created  in  the  image  of  God,  Christianity  at 
once  affords  a  satisfactory  and  dignifying  explanation  of  w^hat 
would  otherwise  have  been  little  more  than  a  pitiable  delusion, 
man's  universal  tendency  to  conceive  of  his  divinity  or  divin- 
ities, as  in  the  human  form ;  while  it  enables  us  to  avail  our- 
selves of  every  natural  manifestation  in  which  pantheism 
arrays  its  imaginary  God,  to  set  it  in  its  own  position  in  the 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  27 

general  system  of  things,  as  a  means  of  revealing  even  the 
least  of  the  ways  of  the  Christian  God,  and  to  gather  from  it 
fresh  argument  to  strengthen  our  foith,  or  to  deepen  our 
adoration.  To  elicit  the  whole  and  precise  meaning  of  the 
passage  relating  to  man's  creation  in  the  image  of  God,  a 
passage  which,  though  profound  and  mysterious,  commends 
itself  irresistibly  to  the  human  reason  and  heart,  would  ex- 
ceed our  present  scope;  only  let  it  be  remembered  that 
Christianity  altogether  avoids  those  anthropomorphic  errors 
into  which  every  conception  formed  of  God  by  the  unaided 
human  reason  must  lapse,  by  proclaiming  the  fact  of  the 
fall,  and  representing  the  Divine  image  in  man,  although  not 
altogether  erased,  as  yet,  to  use  the  words  of  Calvin,  *'  con- 
fused, broken,  and  defiled."  This  brings  us  naturally  to  the 
second  point  we  mentioned,  which  is,  indeed,  the  great  central 
point  of  Christianity,  the  revelation  of  the  perfect  image  of 
God  in  Christ  Jesus.  We  still  are  unable  to  conceive  the 
essential  Deity :  but,  if  we  continue  to  contemplate  the 
Saviour,  we  rise  to  ideas  of  the  mode  in  which  His  attributes 
find  manifestation  unspeakably  more  exalted,  we  mark  the  out- 
goings of  His  wisdom,  power,  and  love,  with  a  clearness  inex- 
pressibly greater  than  can  be  attained  by  any  observation  of  the 
universe  or  study  of  man.  The  infidelity  with  which  we  are  at 
present  concerned,  has  expressed  fervent  admiration  of  Jesus ; 
and  this  fact  must  at  least  make  it  appear  reasonable  in  the 
eyes  of  its  followers,  that  CImstians  discern  in  Him  a  holi- 
ness and  beauty  transcending  those  of  earth.  The  might  of 
the  ocean  and  the  tempest,  the  strength  of  the  everlasting 
hills,  the  silent  beaming  forth,  as  in  ever-renewed  miraculous 
"vision,"  of  the  splendor  and  opulence  of  summer,  the  il- 
lumination of  immensity  by  worlds,  may  offer  some  faint  idea 
of  the  going  forth  of  the  power  of  Omnipotence :  but  there  is 


28  THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE. 

a  still  more  impressive,  and,  as  it  were,  jDresent  manifestation 
of  supernatural  power  made  to  man,  when  the  storm  sinks 
quelled  before  the  eye  of  Jesus,  or  the  dead  comes  from  the 
grave  at  his  word.  When  the  heart  expands  with  a  love  that 
embraces  the  whole  circle  of  sentient  existence,  or  even,  by 
the  bounteous  imagining  of  poetic  sympathy,  first  breathes  an 
ideal  life  into  flower  and  tree,  and  then  over  them  too  sheds, 
with  Wordsworth,  the  smile  of  glowing  tenderness,  we  may 
remember  that  there  still  linger  traces  of  the  Divine  image  in 
man,  and  faintly  imagine  the  streaming  forth  of  that  Love 
which  brightens  the  eyes  of  the  armies  of  heaven,  and  gives 
light  and  life  to  the  universe ;  but  can  any  manifestation  of 
human  tenderness  bring  to  us  such  a  feeling  of  God's  love,  as 
one  tear  of  Jesus  shed  over  Jerusalem,  or  one  revering  look 
into  his  eye,  when  in  the  hours  of  mortal  agony  it  overflowed 
in  love  and  prayer  for  his  murderers  1  We  can  attach  a  true 
and  noble  meaning  to  the  words  of  Fichte  when  he  bids  us 
watch  the  holy  man,  because  in  what  he  "does,  lives,  and 
loves,"  God  is  revealed  to  us ;  but  we  will  affirm  that  any 
instance  of  human  heroism  is  altogether  faint  and  powerless  in 
enabling  us  to  form  a  conception  of  the  holiness  of  God,  when 
compared  with  the  devotion  to  his  Father's  service  of  Him 
whose  meat  and  drink  it  was  to  do  the  will  of  God,  and  who 
died  on  the  cross  to  make  an  atonement  for  sin.  And  if,  in 
addition  to  all  this,  Christianity  told  us  of  a  Divine  Spirit, 
whose  mysterious  but  certain  influence  on  the  mind  enabled  it 
to  discern  a  glory  and  a  beauty  in  the  Saviour  incomparably 
more  exalted  than  could  otherwise  be  distinguished,  how  truly 
might  we  assert  that  it  brought  us  into  a  closer  nearness  to 
the  Divine,  than  the  most  ethereal  dreaming  of  mystic  trance, 
or  the  most  gorgeous  imagining  of  pantheistic  poetry !  But 
not  only  thus  is  the  God  of  the  Christian  a  known  God,  in  a 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  29 

ecnso  in  which  the  God  of  pantheism  never  can  be ;  Jesus  is 
not  only  the  second  Adam,  revealing  that  Divine  image  in  the 
human  form  which  was  presented  by  Adam  before  his  fall,  but 
also  a  Mediator  between  God  and  man.  Through  the  Divine 
Man  the  Christian  can  hold  converse  with  the  Spirit  of  the 
universe. 

And  this  brings  us  directly  to  the  solution  offered  by 
Christianity  of  that  problem  of  the  individual  life  of  which  we 
have  spoken,  and  which  is  expressly  treated  both  by  Fichte 
and  Carlyle. 

Both  these  writers  recognize  it  as  seemly  and  right,  if  not 
in  all  cases  necessary,  that,  at  a  certain  stage  of  the  personal 
history,  the  mind  awaken  and  bestir  itself,  and  struggle  as  in 
throes  of  birth  or  tumult  of  departure ;  that  for  a  time  it 
wrestle  with  doubt,  or  cower  trembling  under  the  wings  of 
mystery,  searching  earth  and  heaven  for  answers  to  its  ques- 
tions, and  satisfaction  for  its  wants ;  that  there  be  a  turning, 
in  baffled  and  indignant  loathing,  from  the  pleasures  of  sense, 
as  all  inadequate  either  to  still  or  satisfy  new  and  irrepressible 
longings  after  the  good,  the  true,  the  beautiful,  after  God,  free- 
dom, immortality.  We  suppose  it  is  an  assertion  which  will 
not  be  counted  rash  or  daring,  that  our  language  contains  no 
example  of  the  delineation  of  mental  confusion  and  dismay,  to 
be  compared  with  Mr.  Carlyle's  description  of  such  a  period  in 
Sartor  Resartus.  In  this  time  of  distraction  and  unrest,  calm 
thought  and  manly  action  are  alike  suspended ;  the  quiet  of 
the  soul  is  broken ;  around  it  seem  to  hang  curtains  of  thick 
cloud,  streaked  with  fire,  shutting  it,  in  gloomy  solitude,  from 
heaven's  light  above,  and  the  voices  of  human  sympathy 
around.  Fichte  and  Carlyle  profess  to  tell  us  how  the  soul 
may  emerge  from  this  confusion  and  distress  to  noble  and  per- 
fect manhood ;  how  it  may  once  more  feel  around  it  the  fresh 


30  THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE. 

breath  of  the  open  sky,  and  over  it  the  clear  smile  of  heaven ; 
how  the  streams  of  thought  may  again  flow  on  in  melodious 
harmony,  and  the  wheels  of  action  obey  their  impulse ;  how 
perfect  content  is  to  be  regained  with  one's  position  in  the 
system  of  things  ;  how  all  fear  and  torment  are  to  give  place 
to  blessedness ;  how  love  is  again  to  suffuse  the  world,  and 
over  every  cloud  ot  mystery  to  be  cast  a  bow  of  peace. 

Such  a  period  Christianity  likewise  recognizes — the  period 
preceding  conversion.  It  is  indeed  by  no  means  necessary 
that  in  every  case  there  occur  this  tumultuous  crisis  of  inter- 
nal life ;  one  of  the  above  writers  declares  that  the  ultimate 
lesson  of  manhood  may  be  taught  by  the  mild  ministries  of 
domestic  wisdom  and  love,  even  better  than  "  in  collision  with 
the  sharp  adamant  of  Fate,"  and  so  the  change  which  is 
wrought  in  the  soul  by  vital  Christianity  may  be  silent  and 
gradual  as  a  cloudless  dawn,  unobserved  by  any  human  eye 
until  the  new  light  wraps  the  whole  character,  touching  all  its 
natural  gifts  with  immortal  beauty,  and  turning  the  cold  dews 
of  night  into  liquid  radiance.  Yet,  in  order  to  define  clearly 
and  discriminate  boldly  the  stages  in  the  change,  we  shall  con- 
template it  in  such  a  case  as  these  authors  suppose. 

We  shall  conceive  one,  who  has  hitherto  been  a  Christian 
but  in  name,  suddenly  pausing  and  beginning  to  give  earnest 
heed  to  the  spiritual  concerns  which  he  has  deemed  of  trivial 
importance.  We  shall  suppose  him  to  be  affected  in  a  two- 
fold manner:  by  a  sense  of  personal  uneasiness,  of  what 
Fichte  names  "  torment,"  of  present  self-accusation  and  pros- 
pective alarm ;  and  by  doubt  and  dismay  in  consideration  of 
the  sad  uncertainty  of  human  sorrow,  and  the  mysterious  and 
appalling  destiny  which,  as  he  learns  from  Christianity,  awaits 
a  portion  of  the  human  race.  The  first  of  these  may  be  indi- 
cated by  the  genera,   name,  fear :  the  second  is  ac  Inability  to 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  31 

assent  to  the  fact  of  divine  justice,  an  inability  of  which  we 
fully  recognize  the  possible  honesty.  The  first  will  agitate 
most  strongly  minds  not  of  a  noble  natural  temper ;  the  sec- 
ond, we  are  well  assured,  is  often  found  to  rack  w^ith  keenest 
agony  men  of  generous  and  benignant  dispositions.  The  sec- 
ond may  even  be  absent  altogether ;  but  we  are  disposed  to 
think  that  the  final  attainment  and  rest  in  this  case  will  be  less 
lofty,  and  pure,  and  beautiful,  than  in  the  other.  Let  it  be 
supposed,  however,  that  the  mind  is  in  extreme  tumult  and 
anguish ;  we  proceed  to  show  how  it  is  that  Christianity  pro- 
fesses to  restore  tranquil  happiness,  and  recall  healthful  ac- 
tivity. 

Perhaps  m  no  case  do  the  tremulous  delicacy  and  subtle 
pride  of  the  day  come  out  more  strongly  than  in  our  modes  of 
regarding  all  that  relates  to  fear  in  religious  matters ;  and  per- 
haps in  no  other  case  does  the  power  of  Chi-istianity  to  lay  its 
hand  on  the  heart  of  the  race,  and  its  way  of  coming  in  contact 
with  life  and  reality,  contrast  so  boldly  with  the  fine-spun,  flat- 
tering, but  evanescent  theories  of  a  haughty  philosophy.  The 
history  of  the  world  abundantly  testifies  that  a  religion  alto- 
gether dissociated  from  fear  is  emasculated  and  unavailing ;  the 
state  of  Greece  in  its  decline,  of  Eome  under  the  Caesars,  of 
the  Italian  republics  of  the  fifteenth  century,  shows  what  is 
that  guardianship  exercised  over  the  national  virtues,  by  a  re- 
ligion which  has  become  a  sentiment  or  a  debate,  which  has 
laid  aside  its  terrors,  and  passed  into  the  school  of  the  philoso- 
pher or  the  studio  of  the  artist.  We  at  once  concede,  that  in 
the  teaching  of  Christianity  there  is,  and  has  always  been,  an 
element,  and  a  prevailing  element,  of  fear.  It  is  a  fact  which 
admits  of  no  disguise,  and  we  must  endeavor  to  account 
for  it. 

The  phenomenon  we  consider  under  the  name  of  fear,  as 


32  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

characteristic  of  that  state  of  the  individual  mind  we  at  pres- 
ent contemplate,  has  escaped  the  observation  of  neither  of  the 
authors  of  whom  we  have  spoken.  Fichte  does  not  indeed,  so 
far  as  we  recollect,  expressly  mention  fear ;  he  uses  the  general 
term,  torment,  and  regards  this  as  nature's  monition  to  leave 
self  and  sensuality,  and  turn  to  the  divine.  Torment,  with 
him,  is  the  stirring  of  the  divine  principle  within,  and  the  ex 
pression  of  its  unrest  and  embarrassment  in  the  bonds  of 
sense ;  but  whence  it  has  arisen  that  this  discipline  is  necessary 
for  the  human  soul,  why  the  throes  of  divine  birth  must  ago- 
nize us,  why  the  beginning  is  anguish,  when  joy,  which  is  the 
companion  of  perfection,  the  guerdon  of  genius,  is  the  progress 
and  the  end,  we  learn  not  from  his  philosophy.  Fichte,  when 
his  terms  are  rightly  interpreted,  defines,  with  a  certain  cor- 
rectness, the  office  of  fear ;  of  its  origin,  save  perhaps  some 
assertion  of  necessity,  he  offers,  to  our  knowledge,  no  theory. 
The  way  in  which  Mr.  Carlyle,  in  the  ultimate  attainment  of 
rest  by  his  wanderer,  disposes  of  fear,  is  to  us  one  of  the  most 
sadly  interesting  portions  of  his  writings.  Drawn  by  the  force 
of  intense  human  sympathy  and  fiery  insight  into  a  more  in- 
timate knowledge  of  the  actual  feelings  of  the  soul  than  the 
lofty  philosophic  enthusiasm  of  Fichte's  speculation  enabled 
him  to  attain,  he  seems  to  indicate  the  element  of  a  regard  to 
futurity  as  entering  into  the  anguish  which  oppresses  the 
awakening  and  aspiring  soul.  The  wanderer  attains  true  man- 
hood by  finally  triumphing  over  fear ;  not  only  fear  of  any 
thing  on  earth,  but  fear  "  of  Tophet  too ;"  by  casting  a  defiant 
glance  around  this  universe,  and  daring  any  existent  power  to 
make  him  afraid.  We  are  aware  of  no  voice  reaching  him 
from  Heaven  to  whisper  of  pardon  and  invite  to  peace ;  we 
see  no  hand  stretched  out  to  remove  sin  or  impart  purity ;  by 
one  tremendous  effort  of  will  he  rids  himself  of  terror,  and 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  33 

declares  that  if  hell  must  be  dared,  it  must.  Some  time  after 
this  achievement,  he  discovers  that  nature  is  God,  that  he  him- 
self is  i^art  of  the  Divinity ;  we  might  say  that,  having  shown 
himself  brave,  he  had  vindicated  his  right  to  his  natural  birth- 
right, and  might  boldly  lay  claim  to  his  inherent  divinity. 
Now,  we  shall  distinctly  admit  that  there  is  sublimity  in  this 
spectacle  of  a  finite  being  defying  the  terrors  of  Tophet ;  we 
attempt  not  to  deny  that  there  is  a  grandeur  in  the  aspect  of 
him,  who,  a  few  short  years  ago  a  weeping  infant  in  his  cradle, 
and  in  a  few  more  ileeting  years  to  be  so  still  under  his  green 
hillock,  thus,  in  the  brief  path  between,  hurls  indignant  scorn 
at  the  terrors  of  infinitude.  But  was  it  not  such  a  sublimity 
which  rested  on  the  brow  of  Moloch,  in  the  glare  of  hell's 
battlements  1  Such  a  sublimity,  methinks,  was  in  the  eyes  of 
Eblis,  where  pride  waged  eternal  conflict  with  despair,  as  hS 
sat  on  his  globe  of  fire.  "  Let  the  world  insult  our  feeble- 
ness ;  there  is  no  cowardice  in  capitulating  with  God."  We 
do  not  affirm  that  Mr.  Carlyle  intends  to  put  into  the  mouth 
of  his  hero  a  deliberate  defiance  of  God ;  but  we  have  perfect 
confidence  in  alleging,  that  he  represents  the  soul  in  the  great 
crisis  of  individual  life,  as  trusting  solely  to  its  own  energies 
for  deliverance,  the  terrors  which  encompass  it  as  drawing  off 
at  the  determined  best  of  human  will,  not  by  Divine  permission 
or  commandment,  the  saviour  of  man,  as  himself.  For  the 
ultimate  origin  of  the  discipline  of  sorrow,  we  look  likewise  in 
vain  in  the  works  of  Mr.  Carlyle. 

When  we  turn  to  Christianity,  it  seems  impossible  to  fail  to 
note  an  access  of  clearness,  and  what  we  might  style  an  agree- 
ment with  the  general  symmetry  of  nature.  We  do  not  now 
consider  the  kindred  subject  of  the  office  assigned  to  hope  in 
the  Christian  scheme ;  we  speak  now  of  fear.  But  it  is  im- 
portant that  the  precise  place  of  each  be  fixed.  If  not  directly 
2* 


34  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

asserted  of  Christianity,  it  is  certainly  a  taunt  brought  against 
those  who,  in  modern  times,  have  named  themselves  Christians, 
that  their  religion  countenances  and  embraces  a  selfish  theory 
of  morals ;  that  it  aims  at  rendering  a  man  virtuous  by  setting  • 
behind  him  Fear,  with  a  picture  of  Dante's  hell,  and  before 
him  Hope,  with  a  picture  of  Milton's  heaven.  With  indi- 
vidual cases  we  have  nothing  to  do,  but,  as  we  proceed,  the 
foul  imputation  will  be  seen  totally  to  fall  away  from  Chris- 
tianity. 

Whence  this  torment  of  self-accusation  and  alarm,  concern- 
ing which  we  have  heard  so  much  *?  It  arises,  says  Christianity, 
in  its  strictly  personal  reference,  from  a  twofold  source ;  from 
a  sense  of  imperfection,  and  a  consciousness  of  guilt.  This 
last  word  is  not  named  by  Mr.  Carlyle  or  Fichte ;  yet  surely 
history,  reason,  and  conscience,  authorize  us  to  impute  to  it  a 
weighty  significance.  Why  is  it  that  in  every  age  man  has 
striven  to  propitiate  his  God  ?  What  mean  those  altars  whose 
smoke  lies  so  darkly  along  human  history,  the  shrieks  of  those 
children  whom  they  pass  through  the  fire  to  Moloch '?  What 
specter  is  that  which  the  human  eye  has  always  seen  setting  a 
crown  on  the  head  of  Death,  a  crown  of  terrors  1  Most  ex- 
plicitly and  conclusively  of  all,  what  is  the  word  which  reason 
utters,  when  compelled,  by  its  very  nature,  to  seek  a  cause  for 
this  torment,  whose  existence  is  granted  ?  Are  we  not,  by 
complicated  and  overpowering  evidence,  led  to  acknowledge 
the  fact,  however  mysterious,  of  guilt "?  We  deny  not  that  this 
result  is  one  of  exhaustless  melancholy ;  but,  alas !  our  tears 
will  not  wipe  out  the  statutes  of  the  universe ;  and  the  man 
of  real  fortitude  will,  of  all  things,  scorn  intellectual  legerde- 
main, and  refuse  to  accept  no  fact.  Of  a  sadness  not  so  pro- 
found, but  still  sad,  is  the  other  source  of  personal  anguish 
recognized  at  this  stage  by  Christianity.     It  is  this  on  which 


THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE.  35 

Mr.  Cailyle  and  Fichte  lay  stress,  but  without  giving  it  any 
explanation,  and  virtually  or  expressly  regarding  it  as  natural 
and  right.  It  is  the  awakening  sense  in  the  bosom  of  man, 
that  he  is  a  stranger  here,  an  exile  from  a  home  where  a  spirit 
could  expatiate ;  it  is  the  dim  agony  that  comes  with  returning 
consciousness,  when  he  begins  to  perceive  the  iron  grating,  and 
the  chain,  and  the  couch  of  straw,  and  when  the  eye  which 
he  turns  toward  the  azure  is  pained  and  dazzled  by  the  once 
natural  light. 

Better  is  this  agony,  because  it  is  the  pain  of  one  return- 
ing to  consciousness,  reason,  and  health,  than  any  wild  dreams 
of  maniac  joy,  yet  it  too  is  unnatural ;  and  we  shall  deem 
no  theory  of  man's  life  as  anywise  satisfactory,  which  tells 
us  not  how  it  became  necessary,  how  this  imperfection  ori- 
ginated, how  man  came  into  that  dungeon.  Without  com- 
ment or  exposition  we  state,  that  Christianity  affords  a  sim- 
ple, natural,  and  adequate  explanation,  both  of  the  guilt  and 
the  imperfection,  by  its  doctrine  of  the  fall.  Of  the  origin  of 
evil,  we  say  not  one  word.  But  so  profoundly  does  the  theory 
that  man  is  now  in  a  state  of  lapse  and  distemper,  seem  to  us 
to  agree  with  all  that  can  be  gathered  from  consciousness  and 
history ;  so  perfectly  does  it  explain  the  glory  of  his  sadness, 
and  the  sadness  of  his  glory ;  so  definitely  does  it  intimate 
why  the  prostrate  column  and  the  shattered  wall  tell  of  a  mind 
in  ruin,  while  yet  the  gold,  and  gems,  and  ivory  that  shine 
amid  the  fragments  hint  that  it  was  once  an  imperial  mansion ; 
so  well  does  it  explain  the  sublime  home-sickness  <7hich  has 
led  earth's  loftiest  sons,  despising  all  that  grew  on  a  soil  ac- 
cursed— that  pleasure  by  which  sense  strove  to  wile  away  the 
famt  reminiscences  of  other  scenes,  that  wealth  which  but  rep- 
resented the  perpetual  struggle  against  death — to  go  aside 
from  the  tlnrong,  and  seek  the  joys  of  spirit  and  the  embrace 


36  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

of  truth  in  lonely  thought  and  contemplation  ;  so  satisfactorily 
does  it  harmonize  the  loveliness  of  the  dawn,  and  the  horror 
of  the  battle-field,  as  existing  in  one  world,  that  it  seems  to  us 
worthy  to  be  ranked  among  profound  mysteries  that  it  can  at 
all  be  called  in  question. 

Christianity  thus  accounts  for,  and  recognizes  as  seasonable, 
the  action  of  fear  on  the  human  mind,  which  is  unable  to  feel 
itself  at  peace  with  God.  How  does  it  remove  it  ?  Does  it 
enjoin  a  calculation  of  advantage  ?  Does  it  declare  that  a 
certain  amount  of  duty  performed  on  the  compulsion  of  ter- 
ror will  avert  danger,  or  say  that  it  is  possible  to  perform  one 
virtuous  action  on  this  compulsion  1  We  can,  in  one  or  two 
sentences,  render  a  full  and  conclusive  answer.  The  Chris- 
tian scheme  of  morals  does  not  recognize  as  deserving  the 
name  of  virtue  what  is  produced  by  any  external  motive, 
what  has  not  its  root  in  the  heart.  This  it  intimates  in  a  two- 
fold manner ;  by  express  declarations  and  by  the  whole  na- 
ture of  that  salvation  which  it  offers  to  man.  It  explicitly 
declares  that  the  glory  of  God  is  to  be  in  all  cases  the  uncon- 
ditional motive  of  action,  the  deep  and  all-pervading  spring 
of  life.  And  the  whole  tenor  of  its  descriptions  of  that  sal- 
vation which  it  proclaims,  renders  the  idea  of  its  morality 
being  produced  by  external  inducement  absurd ;  it  demands  a 
new  birth,  a  new  creation,  a  new  life ;  upon  no  action  will  it 
set  its  seal  of  approbation,  unless  it  is  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit, 
and  springs  from  holiness  and  truth  in  the  inward  parts. 
Scripture  being  thus  clear  and  decided,  it  might  be  well  to 
know  to  what  extent  theologians  have  given  color  to  the 
charge  that  Christianity  is  thus  selfish.  The  mode  in  which 
Christian  writers  during  the  last  century  wrote  did,  to  some  ex- 
tent, lend  it  countenance ;  the  enforcement  of  virtue  by  re- 
wards and  punishment  was,  it  is  probable,  too  exclusively 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  37 

insisted  on  ;  although  it  has,  \vc  think,  been  somewhat  hardly- 
treated,  the  school  of  Palcy  and  Butler  did  tend  to  give  Chris- 
tianity rather  the  aspect  of  a  mechanism  than  of  a  life,  did 
rather  seek  for  it  a  place  beside  a  refined  Epicureanism,  than 
claim  for  it  its  right  and  natural  position,  in  a  more  lofty  and 
ethereal  region  than  was  ever  reached  by  the  sublimest  specu- 
lation of  Platonism.  But  we  have  no  hesitation  in  claiming 
for  the  Puritan  theology  a  freedom  from  any  such  error ;  and 
in  the  conclusion  of  the  second  chapter  of  the  first  book  of 
Calvin's  Institutes,  we  have  his  express  declaration  that,  were 
there  no  hell,  yet,  since  the  Christian  loves  and  reveres  God 
as  a  Father,  the  dread  of  offending  Him  would  alone  sufl^ce 
to  render  him  abhorrent  of  vice.  Fear  does  not  produce  vir- 
tue ;  the  fiict  that  a  man  restrains  himself  from  sin  to  avoid 
the  punishment  of  hell,  is  no  proof  that  he  is  converted.  Yet 
fear  is  not  without  a  function  in  the  system  of  things.  It 
bears  not  the  wedding-garment,  and  no  hand  but  that  of  the 
Divine  Spirit,  working  faith  in  the  Christian,  and  so  enabling 
him  to  appropriate  that  garment,  and  clothe  himself  in  it,  can 
effect  in  him  that  renovation  which  leads  to  godly  action  and 
spiritual  joy  ;  but  it  goes  out  into  the  highways  of  a  blighted 
and  delirious  world,  and  there,  like  a  terrible  prophet  of  the 
wilderness,  who  foretells  the  coming  of  the  mild  Redeemer, 
startles  and  arouses  men.  Its  office  is  preliminary,  external, 
awakening ;  it  is  the  beginnmg  of  wisdom.  Since,  indeed, 
on  this  earth,  the  deep-lying  disease  which  renders  it  neces- 
sary is  never  altogether  removed,  its  warning  voice  is  never 
altogether  silent ;  but  the  humiliating  remedy  will  vanish 
utterly  with  the  disease  of  which  it  is  a  sign,  and  by  which  it 
became  necessary ;  when  the  Christian  goes  to  take  his  place 
among  the  angelic  choirs,  he  will  be  able  to  join  them  in  a 
melody  that  is  only  love ;  and  it  does  not  admit  of  doubt, 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE. 


thnt  every  feeling  of  slavish  fear  with  -which  any  being  regards 
Go 3,  is  strictly  of  the  nature  of  sin. 

By  fear,  or  by  whatever  means  the  Spirit  of  God  may  em- 
ploy, the  soul  is  brought  to  lie  down  in  perfect  abasement 
before  God,  to  acknowledge  its  want,  its  woe,  its  weakness,  and 
its  unreserving  consent  to  receive  all  from  His  hand.  This  is 
what,  in  the  Christian  scheme,  corresponds  to  the  self-annihi- 
lation of  Goethe  and  Carlyle ;  now  is  the  soul  brought  to  that 
stage  of  utter  desolation  and  bareness  which  agrees  with  the 
critical  stage  of  the  wanderer's  trouble.  We  can  not  doubt 
that  here  we  are  at  the  point  where  the  essential  nature  of 
Christianity  is  revealed;  that  we  come  within  sight  of  its 
great  distinctive  virtue,  humility.  Now  it  is  that  the  sinful 
finite  being,  to  use  the  words  of  Pascal,  "  makes  repeatedly 
fresh  efforts  to  lower  himself  to  the  last  abysses  of  nothing- 
ness, while  he  surveys  God  still  in  interminably  multiplying 
immensities ;"  this  is  what  Vinet  pronounces  the  end  of  all 
Christian  preaching,  "  to  cast  the  sinner  trembling  at  the  foot 
of  Mercy."  In  the  melodious,  yet  heart-wrung  wailings  which 
float  down  the  stream  of  ages  from  the  harp  of  the  poet-king 
of  Israel,  the  feelings  of  such  moments  found  expression; 
such  feelings  were  in  the  heart  of  the  Pilgrim,  when,  fleeing 
from  the  City  of  Destruction,  and  fainting  under  his  burden, 
he  knelt  with  clasped  hands  before  the  Cross  ;  and  it  was  in 
this  same  attitude  that  the  New  England  Puritan,  in  utter 
self-abandonment  and  feeling  of  the  majesty  and  holiness  of 
God,  judged  himself  worthy  of  damnation,  and  had  scarce 
power  to  pray.  It  is  but  the  unqualified  acknowledgment 
that  man,  as  he  exists  in  this  world,  requires  the  aid  of  Divine 
power  to  raise  him  to  that  higher  state  of  being  to  which  he 
aspires.  It  is  the  disrobing  of  itself  by  the  soul  of  all  the 
raiment  of  numan  virtue ;  which,  however  pure  and  beauti- 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  39 

ful  it  may  seert  to  earthly  eyes,  is  not  that  spiritual  glory 
which  will  beam  more  fair  in  its  immortality,  when  the  earth 
will  have  faded  away,  and  all  that  fi'amework  of  society, 
which  gives  occasion  and  play  to  the  virtue  that  is  between 
man  and  man,  shall  have  been  gathered  in  by  death,  alike  its 
origin  and  its  end.  It  is  the  confession  that,  however  the  soul 
)f  man  may  wing  the  atmosphere  of  earth,  it  has  now  m 
•inions  on  which  to  ascend  into  the  sunless  serenity  of  celes 
tial  light. 

And  now  we  must  be  silent,  nor  attempt  to  define  the  new 
birth  of  the  spirit.  "  In  what  way,"  says  Coleridge,  "  or  by 
what  manner  of  working,  God  changes  a  soul  from  evil  to 
good,  how  He  impregnates  the  barren  rock  with  priceless 
gems  and  gold,  is  to  the  human  mind  an  impenetrable  mys- 
tery in  all  cases  alike."  Only  this  shall  we  say,  that  by  faith 
the  soul  lays  hold  of  and  unites  itself  to  Jesus,  finding  in  Him 
all  that  for  which  it  has  sought ;  His  mysterious  sacrifice  suffi- 
cient to  make  atonement  for  guilt.  His  righteousness  a  spot- 
less robe  in  which  it  may  sit  forever  at  the  banquet  of  the 
Almighty  King,  His  name  the  harmonizing  of  all  contradic- 
tion, the  solving  of  all  doubt,  the  open  secret  of  the  universe. 
In  a  passage  which  he  who  has  once  read  can  hardly  have 
forgotten,  so  softly  pathetic  is  it,  so  richly  and  melodiously 
beautiful,  Mr.  Carlyle  sets,  as  it  were,  to  lyric  music  the  joy 
of  the  wanderer's  heart  when  he  attains  final  peace.  The  in- 
heritance of  the  Christian  is  likewise  peace,  though  of  another 
nature  from  that  which  visited  the  scathed  heart  of  Teufels 
drockh.  This  is  no  reward  of  proud  self-assertion,  no  raptur 
of  philosophic  dream  :  on  the  Christian,  from  the  eternal  heav- 
ens, there  now  streams  down  the  smile  of  a  living  Eye.  The 
emotions  which  befit  his  state  have,  from  the  olden  time,  been 
voiced  in  a  mild  anthem,  whose  divine  simplicity  and  angelic 


40  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

music  are  beautiful  as  the  morning  star,  and  to  which  we  may- 
imagine  the  saints  of  God,  in  the  future  eternity,  attuning 
their  harps,  when  memory  wanders  back  to  the  little  earth, 
and  they  think  of  that  humility  which  is  the  highest  glory  of 
the  finite.  In  that  anthem  the  Hebrew  minstrel  sung  of  liim- 
self  as  a  stricken  lamb  resting  in  Jehovah's  arms.  The  peace 
of  the  Christian  is  to  feel  the  circling  of  those  arms,  as  he  lies 
in  the  light  of  that  countenance. 

We  are  compelled  to  be  very  brief.  We  can  but  add  a 
few  fragmentary  remarks,  which  we  pray  readers  to  regard 
rather  as  partial  indications  of  what  might  be  said,  than  as 
any  unfolding  of  the  momentous  and  inspiring  themes  to 
which  they  relate.  We  should  like  to  discuss,  first,  the  ethi- 
cal value  of  this  theory  of  conversion  in  that  precise  point 
where  it  contrasts  with  pantheism ;  next,  the  mode  in  which 
it  tranquilizes  the  mind  which  is  agitated  by  a  sense  of  the 
sorrowful  mysteries  of  human  destiny,  and  the  dark  paths  of 
divine  justice;  then,  the  Christian  theory  of  work  ;  and,  lastly, 
the  Christian  theory  of  heaven.  We  can  but  offer  one  or  two 
words  on  each. 

We  accept  from  the  hands  of  Mr.  Carlyle  and  Goethe  the 
far-trumpeted  doctrine  of  self-renunciation ;  we  listen  to  Fichte, 
and  to  the  whole  of  that  lofty  spiritualistic  school  of  which  he 
may  be  considered  the  head,  and  bear  witness  to  their  em- 
phatic and  eloquent  proclamation  of  the  sin  and  blasphemy 
of  selfishness,  and  we  boldly  assert  that  it  is  in  Christian  con- 
version alone  that  self-renunciation  is  attained,  that  self  is 
actually  conquered.  Of  all  that  holds  of  pantheism,  of  the  ge- 
nius-worship of  the  day,  of  the  idealistic  or  emotional  religiosity 
now  so  common,  of  all  which  professes  to  work  in  the  human 
bosom  a  benign  and  self  conquering  revolution  by  the  evolving 
of  any  hidden  nobleness  lying  there,  or  reference  to  any  perfect 


THEINDIVIDUALLIFE.  41 

internal  ligit  hitherto  obscured,  we  afTirm  that  it  utterly  fails 
to  approach  the  root  of  the  evil.  When  laid  down  in  the  most 
perfect  and  plausible  philosophic  form,  these  views  are  thus 
powerless,  and,  in  application  to  practical  life,  the  perils  which 
encompass  them  are  obvious  and  unavoidable.  To  denounce 
the  sensual  life  is  no  great  achievement  or  novelty  in  ethics  ; 
a  moderately  enlightened  Epicureanism  has  always  done  that. 
But  how  can  I  apply  the  term  of  self-renunciation  to  an  act 
which  is  really  and  merely  the  assertion  of  self,  of  spiritual 
self,  that  is  ?  What  is  this  more  than  the  purchase  of  a  lofty 
and  delicious  pride,  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  garbage  of  sense  ? 
Self,  on  every  such  theory,  leaves  the  coarse  dwelling  of  sen- 
sual pleasure,  but  it  is  only  to  rear  for  its  own  royal  abode,  a 
palace  of  gold  and  cedar.  And  if  the  commands  of  a  serene 
spiritualism  may,  in  the  case  of  the  philosopher,  repel  the  ad- 
vances of  sense,  who  that  has  ever  cast  his  eye  over  life  can 
refuse  to  concede  that  they  would  be  all  unheeded  on  that  wild 
arena ;  while  the  absence  of  any  precise  definition  or  appli- 
cable test  of  the  spiritual  and  divine  in  the  individual  breast, 
would  leave  a  broad  avenue,  the  more  inviting  that  it  was 
lined  by  academic  plane-trees,  to  all  manner  of  delusion,  ex- 
travagance, and  absurdity. 

This  is  a  delicate,  soft-stepping,  silken-slippered  age,  patron- 
izing the  finer  feelings  and  a  high-flown  emotional  virtue ;  vice 
has  cast  away  its  coarse  and  tattered  garment,  and,  though 
finding  no  great  difHculty  in  obtaining  admittance  into  good 
society,  must  come  with  sleek  visage,  in  a  spruce,  modern 
suit,  glitteiing  with  what  seems  real  gold;  the  religion  that 
languishes  In  luxurious  aspirings  or  dreams,  is  very  widely 
approved  of  But  does  not  an  elevated  and  insidious  but  fatal 
pride  tend  to  pervade  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the  time? 
We  will  glow  in  lofty  ardor  over  the  page  of  Fichte,  Carlyle, 


42  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

Schiller  or  Goethe,  but  it  is  a  balmy  and  consoling  air  which 
'breathes  its  mild  adulation  through  our  souls ;  for  is  it  not 
our  own  nobleness  which  is  so  gratefully  evoked  ?  "We  will 
worship  in  the  Temple  of  the  Universe,  with  a  certain  and 
proud  homage,  like  that  of  the  stars,  and  winds,  and  oceans ; 
but  our  lordly  knees  must  not  be  soiled  by  getting  down  into 
the  dust.  We  will  perform  with  Goethe  the  great  moral  act 
of  self  annihilation,  and  wrap  ourselves,  with  much  ado,  in  the 
three  reverences  :  but  it  were  strangely  bigoted  to  weep  like 
an  old  Puritan,  because  we  can  not  leap  from  sin  our  shadow. 
Christianity,  we  proclaim,  is  pervading  the  age  more  deeply 
than  ever  before ;  not  now  as  a  constraining  and  antiquated 
form,  but  as  an  essence  and  life ;  not,  indeed,  with  remarkable 
definiteness,  not  troubling  itself  to  answer  such  minor  ques- 
tions as  whether  Christ's  history  is  an  actual  fact,  or  whether 
Paul  was  an  inspired  preacher  or  a  moral  genius  troubled  with 
whims,  but  with  a  grand  expansiveness  and  philosophic  toler- 
ance, sweet  to  remark ;  casting  a  respectful  and  even  deferring 
glance  toward  its  plebeian  ancestor  of  Judea,  in  whose  steps, 
however,  an  enlightened  descendant  can  not  exactly  walk. 
As  of  old,  it  remains  true  that  Christianity  alone  preaches 
humility,  and  that  this  preaching  is  ever  the  special  offense  of 
the  Cross ;  rather  tread  the  burning  marl  in  pride  than  re- 
ceive mercy  only  from  God.  But  for  the  fallen  finite  being, 
this  is  the  true  position  toward  the  Infinite ;  from  this  Chris- 
tianity can  not  swerve.     We  proceed  to  our  second  point. 

There  is  a  pain  which  arises  from  inability  to  recognize  the 
facts  of  divine  justice,  and  from  human  sympathy  with  that 
part  of  mankind  which  rejects  the  Christian  salvation,  and 
meets  the  doom  foretold.  It  is  a  sorrow  which  we  believe 
never  on  earth  departs  entirely  from  noble  minds,  and  is,  per- 
haps, not  intended  to  depart ;  that  sympathetic  agony  which, 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  43 

in  virtue  of  our  human  unity,  we  feel  with  every  brother  suf- 
ferer, whatever  his  sin,  is  doubtless  designed  to  be  one  of  our 
most  mighty  incentives  to  spread  the  Gospel  and  to  urge  its 
acceptance.  But,  if  Christianity  does  not  altogether  remove 
this  pain,  it  does  more  to  that  end  than  any  other  system ; 
if  there  are  clouds  in  the  heavens  which  not  even  the  tele- 
scope of  faith  can  yet  resolve  into  worlds  of  light,  it  can  open 
a  prospect  infinitely  more  glorious  and  consoling  than  presents 
itself  to  the  unaided  eye.  If  we  might  conceive  any  sentence 
as  written  over  the  throne  of  God,  kindling  the  eyes  of  the 
cherubim,  it  would  surely  be  this :  "  God  is  Love."  Chris- 
tianity came,  as  it  were,  with  the  intimation  that  such  words 
were  inscribed  by  the  hand  of  Eternal  Truth ;  faith,  gazing 
from  the  far  station  of  earth,  might  be  unable  to  decipher  the 
separate  letters,  and  might  see  them  only  as  blended  into  one 
star-beam,  falling  through  time's  night,  but  even  in  that  beam 
there  was  infinite  consolation  and  infinite  hope.  What  does 
philosophy  say  of  the  future  of  the  race  1  Either  it  dismisses, 
as  the  vagary  of  superstition,  all  idea  of  the  possibility  of  the 
future  visiting  of  sin  by  retribution,  and  thus  leaves  unstilled 
man's  instinctive  and  indestructible  apprehensions,  and  unac- 
counted for  a  dumb  yet  adamantine  array  of  facts.  Chris- 
tianity at  least  postpones  the  difficulty  ;  it  refers  it  to  eternity 
and  to  God.  It  bestows  the  sublime  privilege  of  waiting  upon 
the  Most  High  ;  it  permits  the  weak  and  wildered  creature  of 
finitude  to  watch  the  unfolding  of  the  schemes  of  almighty 
Wisdom  under  the  eye  of  almighty  Love ;  and  it  is  not  pre- 
sumptuous to  think  that  one  great  fountain  of  that  felicity, 
on  which,  as  on  an  ocean  stream,  the  souls  of  the  blessed 
will  eternally  float,  will  burst  forth  in  the  sudden  discovery 
of  the  might  of  that  love,  and  the  depth  of  that  wisdom,  in 
the  disposal  of  every  fate.     When  God  wipes  away  all  tears 


44  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

from  the  eyes  of  His  own,  He  will  wipe  away,  also,  those 
noblest,  and  perhaps  hottest  tears  that  are  shed  on  earth — tears 
over  the  lost. 

The  Christian  theory  of  work  can  be  expressed  in  a  few 
words,  yet  its  full  exposition  and  illustration  were  one  of  the 
most  sublime  pages  in  sacred  poetry.  "  Faith  that  worketh 
by  love  ;"  it  is  all  here.  The  basis  is  faith ;  we  need  scarce 
say  it  must  lie  at  the  root  of  all  action ;  whatever  truth  the 
age  may  have  forgotten,  there  is  one  truth  which  has  been  ut- 
tered in  strains  of  eloquence,  so  earnest  and  overpowering, 
that  it  bids  fair  to  be  for  some  time  remembered  ;  that  a  man 
or  nation  is  mighty  in  work,  precisely  as  he  or  it  believes. 
Give  a  people  faith,  and  though  its  tribes  lie  scattered  and 
powerless  over  its  desert  domain,  like  the  dismembered  limbs 
of  a  giant,  it  will  gather  itself  together,  and  arise  and  stride 
forth  along  the  shaking  earth,  till  every  nation  trembles  at  the 
name  of  Islam ;  give  a  man  faith,  and  though  his  heart  be 
narrow  and  his  brain  confined,  and  what  he  believes  an  ab- 
surdity and  dream,  he  will  pass  by  hundreds  of  abler  men 
who  occasionally  doubt,  and,  trampling  them  in  their  gore, 
will  control  a  fiery  nation,  and  reign  in  terror,  till  the  name 
of  Robespierre  is  a  trembling  and  abhorrence  over  the  whole 
earth.  But,  if  all  belief  is  powerful  in-  action,  if  even  belief 
in  an  idea  make  a  man  resistless,  of  what  nature  will  that 
work  be,  whose  hidden  root  only  is  faith,  but  all  whose  bloom 
and  outgoing  is  love  1  And  thus  it  is  in  Christianity.  We 
enter  not  at  all  upon  discussion  of  the  nature  of  saving  faith  ; 
but  this  is,  at  least  and  beyond  doubt,  implied  in  it,  that  the 
believer  is  certain  that  God  loves  him,  that  in  Christ  He  is 
his  reconciled  Father.  For  one  moment  ponder  this  thought. 
The  man  has  faith  that  God  loves  him ;  with  all  the  emphasis 
of  that  strongest  of  human  words,  he  lays  it  to  his  heart  that 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  46 

an  afTection  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Eternal  for  him.  What 
will  be  the  instant  result,  by  all  we  know  even  of  fallen  man? 
"We  suspect  it  is  not  possible  for  a  human  heart  altogether  to 
resist  the  attraction  even  of  human  love  ;  the  blind  and  selfish 
affection  of  passion  which  impiously  arrogates  the  name  may 
be  scorned  and  hated,  but  deep,  unselfish,  spiritual  love  can 
not  surely  be  known  to  exist  toward  us  in  any  bosom,  without 
awakening  some  responsive  thrill.  And  if  it  is  possible  be- 
tween man  and  man,  it  is  assuredly  impossible  between  man 
and  God.  It  is  not  given  to  the  human  being  to  resist  the  at- 
traction of  infinite  tenderness,  when  once  faith  has  seen  the 
eye  of  God  looking  down  upon  His  accepted  child  ;  after  long 
waiting,  when  at  last  the  balmy  drops  descend,  the  fountains 
inust  spring.  And  what  is  the  relief,  the  joy,  the  blessedness, 
of  him  that  loves  1  Is  it  not  the  pouring  forth  of  this  love, 
the  urging  of  it  into  every  channel  where  it  is  possible  for  it 
to  flow  1  Yes  :  and  this  is  the  Christian  scheme  of  work ; 
that  he,  whose  breast  swells  with  the  irrepressible  love  of 
God,  finds  duty  transmuted  actually  into  its  own  reward,  and 
every  labor  but  fuel  to  enable  the  flame  of  his  joy  to  go  up 
toward  heaven.  The  psychological  verity  of  this  whole 
scheme  is  perfect.  Why  is  it  that  when  the  heart  of  the  youth 
or  maiden  has  once  been  filled  with  love,  when  its  whole 
compass  has  been  occupied  as  with  molten  gold  by  affection 
for  some  beloved  fellow-creature,  if  this  beloved  proves  false 
or  dies,  it  is  no  very  uncommon  circumstance  that  madness  or 
death  ensue  1  Is  it  not  because  the  outgoing  of  love  is  pre- 
vented, and  instead  of  issuing  forth  to  wrap  its  object,  instead 
of  welling  out  in  streams  of  joy,  in  offices  of  affection  to  that 
object,  it  must  struggle  in  its  fountain,  and  burn  the  heart  that 
harbors  it  1  And  may  we  not,  in  the  face  of  Stephen,  radi- 
ant in  death,  in  the  triumph-song  of  Paul  when  about  to  be 


46  THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE. 

offered,  in  the  ecstatic  hymns  on  the  lips  of  the  early  martyrs 
as  they  went  to  the  stake,  find  reliable  evidence  that  there 
may  be  a  love  in  the  human  breast  for  a  Father  God  which 
will  seek,  as  in  an  agony,  for  some  channel  in  which  to  flow 
forth  ■?  And  never  can  it  have  to  seek  in  vain  ;  in  the  inner 
kingdom  of  the  soul,  in  the  outer  kingdom  of  the  world,  there 
is  ever  work  to  be  done  for  God,  ever  some  commandment  to 
be  fulfilled  by  which  the  Christian  may  prove  that  he  loves  his 
Saviour. 

Of  this  last  duty  and  joy  as  permitted  to  the  Christian,  we 
must  say  one  word.  It  were  certainly  a  strange  mistake,  it 
would  indicate  an  interesting,  almost  enviable  freshness  and 
spring  verdure  of  intellect,  to  imagine  that  the  refutation  of 
an  error  would  prove  its  destruction.  Even  at  this  day,  and 
in  publications  by  theological  professors,  you  may  find  it  de- 
clared that  Calvinism  circumscribes  the  freedom  and  fullness 
of  the  offer  of  redemption.  Singular  !  If  you  gather  all  the 
human  race  into  one  congregation,  be  I  the  most  rigid  of 
intelligent  Calvinists,  I  will  put  to  my  lips  the  trumpet  of  the 
Gospel,  and  proclaim  that  whatsoever  will  may  come  and 
drink  of  the  water  of  life  freely.  If  you  bring  me  to  a  hoary 
sinner,  who  has  defied  God  for  a  lifetime,  and  who  now  shakes 
with  the  palsy  of  death,  I  will  tell  him  that  God  yet  waits  to 
be  gracious,  and  willeth  not  his  death.  And  will  my  plead- 
ing with  this  dying  transgressor  be  the  less  earnest  and  hope- 
ful, because  I  have  not  to  trust  to  the  feeble  efficacy  df  my 
words,  or  the  grasp  of  his  expiring  faculties,  but  may  look 
ind  pray  for  the  extension  of  a  Divine  arm  to  seize  and  res- 
cue his  soul"?  Because  God  has  not  taken  me  into  His  confi- 
dence, has  not  unfolded  to  me  the  Book  of  Life,  and  showed 
me  the  names  of  those  chosen  before  the  foundation  of  the 
world,  will  I  not    deign  to  be  His  instrument,  to  save  whom 


rnE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  47 

He  pleases  ?  You  dispatch  a  thousand  vessels  from  this  har- 
bor, yet  you  know  certain  of  them  will  he  the  prey  of  the 
tempest.  You  ship  your  compass ;  how  does  it  act  1  You 
fix  the  lightning-rod  on  the  mast ;  luhy^  and  in  what  precise 
manner,  does  it  call  down  the  fire  of  heaven'?  Calvinism 
makes  it  a  duty  to  proclaim  the  Gospel  freely :  but,  in  accord- 
ance  with  the  whole  analogy  of  nature,  it  covers  up  in  mys- 
tery God's  creative  work. 

In  speaking  of  work,  have  we  not  already  come  to  speak  of 
heaven  1  We  have.  By  beginning  with  work,  we  arrived  at 
joy ;  we  shall  now,  beginning  from  joy,  see  whether  it  will 
not  lead  us  to  work.  Butler  defines  happiness  to  consist  in 
"a  faculty's  having  its  proper  object."  "Pleasure,"  says  Sir 
William  Hamilton,  "is  the  reflex  of  unimpeded  energy." 
The  two  expressions  explain  and  agree  with  each  other  :  the 
latter,  indeed,  embraces  the  former.  We  doubt  not  they  are 
substantially  true,  and  would  enable  us  to  classify  every  de- 
gree and  order  of  happiness  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest ; 
it  always  remaining  true  that,  however  base  or  diluted  might 
be  the  joy  of  activity,  and  though,  relatively,  even  painful,  it 
might  yet  be  named  pleasure,  in  contrast  with  the  state  of 
compulsory  inactivity :  the  pleasure  of  revenge  is  poor  and 
contemptible,  yet  it  is  a  joy  compared  with  its  unsatisfied 
gnawing.  And  whatever  might  be  the  lowest  and  feeblest 
form  of  joy,  it  can  rjot  admit  of  question  what  would  be  the 
highest.  It  would  assuredly  be  the  activity  of  love.  We 
have  no  sooner  uttered  the  word  than  we  are  at  the  gate  of 
the  Christian  heaven.  When  the  heart  begins  to  go  out  in 
love  to  God,  heaven  has  commenced  within  it,  and  the  certi- 
tude of  an  eternal  heaven  is  found  in  this,  that  it  is  toward  an 
Infinite  God  that  it  goes  out.  Provision  is  thus  made  at  once 
for  endless  activity  and  endless  love.     There  has  been  much 


48  THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE. 

written  in  our  day  about  the  worship  of  sorrow,  and  a  great 
truth  lies  under  the  words ;  this  truth,  freed  of  its  encumber- 
ing falsehood,  Christianity  embraces ;  it  speaks  of  tribulation 
as  that  through  which  we  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
and  gives  sorrow  the  high  office  of  breaking  the  soul  to  hu- 
mility and  contriteness,  that  it  may  kneel  at  the  feet  of  Jesus. 
But,  if  there  is  any  one  instinctive  utterance  of  the  human 
soul  to  which  we  would  accord  consent,  it  is  the  declaration 
that  sorrow,  whatever  it  may  subserve,  is  a  blot  upon  God's 
universe,  is  the  fang  of  the  snake  sin,  is  the  shadow  cast  by 
the  wings  of  the  great  dragon  that  has  come  up  from  the  bot- 
tomless j^it  to  prey  on  man ;  and  that,  if  well  interpreted,  the 
worship  of  joy  is  higher  than  the  worship  of  sorrow.  But 
how  completely  is  all  that  insinuation  about  Christianity 
being  allied  to  a  selfish  theory  of  morals  now  seen  to  vanish  ! 
Tlie  Christian  does  not  serve  God  for  happiness,  but  God  by 
a  sublime  necessity  has  attached  happiness  to  His  service. 
Along  the  ranks  of  His  army  goes  the  command  to  rejoice ; 
above  it  floats  the  banner  of  love.  Felicity  is  the  light  which 
rests  over  it  all.  From  the  helmets  of  the  seraphim  that  light 
is  flashed  back  in  full  unclouded  blaze ;  on  us  of  the  human 
race  w^ho,  as  Isaac  Taylor  says  beautifully,  "  seem  to  stand 
almost  on  the  extreme  confines  of  happiness,"  its  first  rays 
are  even  now  descending.  Happiness  is  the  spheral  music  in 
which  a  God,  whose  name  is  Love,  has  ordained  that  holiness 
must  voice  itself;  His  light,  as  it  sweeps  over  the  ^Eolean 
harp  of  immensity,  kindling  every  dead  world  into  beauty, 
breaks  forth  in  the  Memnonian  anthem  of  joy. 

And  have  we  no  distinctive  character  to  assign  to  that  state  " 
and  that  locality  which,  in   common   discourse,  receive  the 
special  name  of  heaven  1     In  the  essential  character  of  the 
happiness  of  the  future  heaven,  we  can  point  to  no  change, 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  49 

but  in  circumstances  there  is  a  mighty  alteration.  Fichte, 
importunately  insisting  that  a  party,  which  we  take  to  be  that 
of  evangelical  Christianity,  expects  a  sensuous  heaven,  points 
in  triumph  to  the  fact  that  the  eye  is  by  it  turned  to  futurity 
when  there  can  be  but  an  objective  change ;  while  all  that  is 
subjective  in  heaven's  bliss  must  be  enjoyed  now  or  never. 
The  philosopher  is  doubly  at  fault :  to  represent  sublunary 
delights  as  filling,  even  to  the  most  joyful,  for  any  considera- 
ble time,  the  immeasurable  capacity  of  joy  possessed  by  man, 
can  be  considered  merely  as  a  flourish  of  philosophic  poetry : 
while,  had  he  for  a  moment  reflected,  he  must  have  consid- 
ered it  but  fair  to  concede  to  those  against  whom  he  argued, 
that  object  and  subject  are  so  closely  connected,  that  we  must 
almost  conceive  ourselves  beyond  the  bounds  of  finitude  ere 
we  can  conceive  their  mutual  independence.  It  is  true  that 
the  difference  between  the  inheritance  of  the  saints  on  earth 
and  their  inheritance  in  light,  is  one  of  circumstances ;  it  is 
true,  too,  that  sorrow  as  well  as  fear  in  the  Cliristian  bosom  is 
the  sign  or  the  result  of  sin,  and  that  the  more  faith  now 
drinks  of  the  cup  of  joy,  the  more  does  it  obey  divine  injunc- 
tion ;  yet  we  should  deem  it  mournful  indeed,  if  the  Gospel 
did  not  point  the  eye  of  hope  to  some  great  outbreaking  of 
light,  as  to  mark  a  certain  stage  in  the  Christian's  history. 
And  such  there  is ;  and  so  great  is  its  brightness,  that  there 
is  a  propriety  in  the  habit  of  appropriating  to  the  ages  which 
succeed  it  the  special  name  of  celestial.  Those  who  desire  to 
form  some  conception  of  the  peculiar  glory  of  these  ages,  of 
which  we  can  not  speak  here  at  length,  we  would  advise  to 
read  Butler's  sublime  sermon  on  the  Love  of  God,  to  ponder 
it  deeply,  and  to  follow  out  its  suggestive  meaning.  Butler 
there  aims  at  indicating  the  exhaustless  sources  of  joy  which 
would  be  found  in  the  contemplation  of  the  divine  nature. 

3 


60  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

We  can  here  offer  only  one  or  two  themes  of  meditation,  sup- 
plementary to  this  central  consideration.  Let  it  then  be 
thought  what  a  power  there  is  toward  the  impeding  and  shad- 
owing of  happiness,  in  the  very  fact  that  this  is  a  world  of 
prevailing  sin.  We  fight  here  under  the  cloud  :  we  can  have 
little  hope  that  we  will  hear  the  final  shout  of  victory.  And 
as  we  go  to  each  charge,  do  we  not  see  around  us  the  fallen 
and  the  dying "?  Are  we  not  aware  that  over  the  whole  earth 
there  is  always  sorrow,  and  have  we  not  to  dim  the  eye  of 
imagination,  and  close  the  gates  of  sympathy,  that  we  cry  not 
out  at  the  spectacles  of  grief  which  are  ever,  in  woeful  pagean- 
try, passing  onward  toward  the  grave  1  How  true  is  this  of 
Mrs.  Browning's ! 


'O 


"  The  fool  hath  said  there  is  no  God, 
But  none,  there  is  no  sorrow." 

Every  human  heart  must  throb  to  that  touch  of  beautiful 
pathos,  in  which  the  author  of  Festus  bodies  forth  the  depth 
and  earnestness  of  human  woe.  Among  the  celestial  bands 
an  angel  is  seen  in  tears ;  a  word  of  amazement  passes  along 
at  the  sight  of  an  angel  weeping ;  but  the  wonder  is  soon  ex- 
plamed. 

"  It  is  the  angel  of  the  earth, 
She  is  always  weeping." 

While  our  step  is  on  such  a  world  as  earth,  we  must  know 
the  thrills  of  sympathetic  anguish.  Surely  it  will  be  an  un- 
measured access  of  joy  when  the  cloud  of  sin,  smitten  by  the 
light  of  eternity,  finally  rolls  away,  and  bares  the  sunless 
heavens.  Consider,  again,  the  joy  that  may  arise  in  the 
heavenly  ages  from  the  contemplation  of  the  works  of  God. 
Even  here  it  can  not  be  questioned  that  serene  and  exquisite 


THE     INDIVIDUAL     LIFE.  61 

enjoyment  is  obtained  by  pure  and  elevated  minds  in  gazing 
on  the  greatness  and  beauty  of  nature.  But  the  mind  now 
may  be  compared  to  a  mountain  lake,  in  which,  indeed,  at 
times,  the  silent  and  beautiful  hills,  and  the  calm  flowers,  and 
forest  foliage,  and  the  clouds  touched  by  the  fmger  of  morn  or 
eve,  may  glass  themselves,  but  which  is  ever  and  anon  ruffled 
and  ob«?cured  by  the  rude  tempest.  And  who  can  tell  how  far 
this  enjoyment  may  be  enhanced,  when  the  sympathies  are  al. 
true  and  harmonious,  and  vibrating  to  the  music  of  love? 
What  mortal  man  can  guess  the  rapture  which  fills  the  eyes 
of  the  seraphim  as  they  sweep  onward  among  the  stars  of 
God !  Lastly,  not  to  multiply  instances,  can  we  not  even  now 
perceive,  that  from  Christian  friendship,  as  it  would  exist  in 
heaven,  there  would  result  an  exhaustless  and  unutterable  joy. 
Tlie  one  complaint  that  noble  minds  have  against  society  is, 
that  its  vast  texture  of  forms  and  gradations  prevents  kindred 
hearts  from  uniting,  thwarts  the  action  of  sympathy.  As- 
suredly the  highest  terrestrial  joy  is  that  of  perfect  friendship ; 
and  how  rare,  how  nearly  impossible,  is  perfect  friendship 
here ! 

"Are  we  not  form'd,  as  notes  of  music  are, 
For  one  another,  though  dissimilar  ?" 

Yet  the  harmony  that  can  result  from  this  union  in  diversity 
is  scarce  to  be  seen  on  earth.  It  is  no  vague  imagination,  but 
what  can  be  clearly  deduced  from  Scripture  and  reason,  and 
easily  embraced  in  thought,  that  from  the  friendship  of  the 
redeemed,  knit  in  perfect  sympathy  of  divine  love,  will  spring 
a  joy  which  the  harps  of  heaven  will  scarce  have  chords  to 
voice. 

Such  considerations  as  these  might  be  multiplied  indefi- 
nitely, and  that  with  strict  adherence  to  truth.     The  prospect 


62  THE     INDIVIDUAL    LIFE. 

opened  up  to  us  is  sublime  indeed.  And  if  its  glory  admitted 
of  enhancement,  would  it  not  arise  from  casting  a  look  back 
upon  the  stricken  and  lowly  penitent,  as  he  lay  in  Christian 
humility,  expecting  all  from  the  hand  of  God"?  Here  it  is, 
every  way,  as  in  the  case  of  physical  science ;  which,  beginning 
with  bare  algebraic  formula,  climbs  upward  from  system  to 
system,  till  it  is  encompassed  with  the  blaze  of  an  inconceiv- 
able glory,  and  the  wing  of  human  imagination  is  seen  feebly 
fluttering  far  below. 

We  close  this  chapter  with  an  allusion  to  a  passage  in 
Fichte's  Way  to  the  Blessed  Life,  which  has  stiTick  us  as  very 
remarkable.  After  confessing  that  neither  himself  nor  any 
other  philosopher  had  ever  succeeded  in  elevating,  by  popular 
instruction,  those  who  "  either  will  not  or  can  not  study  phi- 
losophy systematically,  to  the  comprehension  of  its  fundamen- 
tal truths,"  he  distinctly  allows  that  "  Christ's  Apostles,"  and 
a  succession  of  "  very  unlearned  j^ersons,"  have  possessed  tliis 
essential  knowledge.  He  discriminates  well  the  scientific  and 
developed  knowledge  of  philosophy  from  the  life-knowledge 
of  its  fundamental  truths.  But,  might  it  not  have  occurred  to 
him  that  perhaps  this  strange  exception  might  have  another 
meaning  and  cause  than  any  of  which  he  dreamed ;  that  phi- 
losophy had,  for  some  special  reason,  failed  to  do  what  the  few 
poor  men  of  Judea  accomplished  ?  Might  he  not  have  con- 
ceived it  possible  that  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  had  actually  some 
wondrous  power  of  getting  at  the  life  ?  If  he  missed  the  truth, 
let  us  hold  by  it.  We  think  there  is  a  profound  meaning  in 
the  following  sentences  of  Neander,  used  in  reference  to  primi- 
tive Christianity : — "  It  belonged,  indeed,  to  the  essence  of 
Christianity,  that  while  it  could  become  all  things  to  all  men, 
and  adapt  itself  to  the  most  different  and  opposite  circum- 
stances of  human  nature,  it  could  condescend  even  to  wholly 


THEINDIVIDUALLIFE.  63 

sensuous  modes  of  comprehending  divine  things,  in  order,  by 
the  power  of  a  divine  life^  working  from  within,  gradually  to 
spiritualize  them.  *  *  *  In  this  respect,  the  great  saying 
of  the  apostle  may  often  have  found  its  application,  that  the 
divine  treasure  was  received — and  for  a  season  preserved — in 
earthen  vessels,  that  the  abundant  power  might  be  of  God, 
and  not  of  man."  Let  this  be  well  pondered,  and  that  superi- 
ority in  Christianity  which  Fichte  acknowledges  over  his  or 
any  other  philosopher's  teachhig,  may  be  explained.  Cole- 
ridge spake  truly  when  he  said  that  philosophy  was  in  the 
Pagan  night  as  the  fire-fly  of  the  tropics,  making  itself  visible, 
but  not  irradiating  the  darkness. 


CHAPTEE    II 


THE    SOCIAL    LIFE. 


We  open  this  chapter  with  the  following  proposition: — 
Religion  is  the  only  stable  basis  on  which  a  commonwealth 
can  be  reared.  This,  we  think,  might  be  demonstrated  by 
clear,  unimpassioned,  inductive  reasoning ;  we  desire  to  trace 
in  outline  one  or  two  of  the  main  divisions  of  the  proof. 

The  first,  and  perhaps,  all  things  considered,  the  most  im- 
portant argument  in  its  support,  is  to  be  derived  from  the 
analogy  of  the  individual.  It  is  an  indisputable  fact  that  the 
community  has,  so  to  speak,  a  distinct  personality ;  that  it  is 
not  a  mere  collection  of  individuals.  Yet,  we  venture  to  say, 
that  the  more  careful  and  protracted  our  observation  of  the 
man  and  the  nation  is,  and  the  more  profound  our  reflection 
upon  the  phenomena  presented  by  each,  the  more  firm  will 
our  assurance  become  that  a  strict  analogy  holds  between 
them.  So  strong  is  our  conviction  of  this,  that  Butler's  demon- 
stration of  the  supremacy  of  conscience  in  the  individual  bosom 
is  quite  sufficient  to  satisfy  us  that  the  healthful  and  natural 
state  of  the  nation  is  exhibited,  only  when  the  national  con- 
science is  dominant,  when  religion  prevails.  The  political 
Butler  has  not  yet  appeared ;  but  a  noble  task  awaits  him. 
He  will  show  how,  as  the  man  who  listens  to  the  voice  of  con- 


THE     SOCIAL     LIFE.  55 

science,  who  can  stand  apart  from  his  fellows,  and,  over  all  the 
brawling  of  the  popular  wind,  hear  the  still  small  voice  of  con- 
science as  supreme  on  earth,  and  turn  his  eye  at  its  monition 
toward  heaven  for  an  approval  which  will  make  him  independ- 
ent of  human  opinion,  is  he  who  is  most  true  to  his  nature ; 
so  the  nation  which  would  rightly  occupy  its  position  in  the 
world  must  have  aims  above  all  that  is  sublunary,  and  hold 
itself  as  a  nation  responsible  to  God. 

The  second  source  of  argument  on  this  point  is  the  evidence 
of  history.  More  express  and  conclusive  evidence  than  is  de- 
rivable from  this  source,  we  can  scarce  conceive.  Of  many 
things  the  historical  student  may  be  doubtful,  but  of  this  at 
least  he  must  be  sure :  That  no  amount  of  wealth,  no  extent 
of  culture,  has  ever  given  a  nation  strength  and  stability,  when 
the  religious  element  has  been  in  decay.  Let  it  be  noted  that 
we  now  speak  of  the  development  and  power  of  the  religious 
faculty  ;  we  treat  not  the  subordinate,  though  important  ques- 
tion, whether  the  religion  is  true  or  false.  And  we  bid  any 
man  consider  the  whole  history  of  Judea,  of  Greece,  of  Rome, 
of  Italy,  and  we  may  add  of  France,  and  declare,  whether  the 
nation  is  capable  of  avoiding  some  one  fatal  peril  or  another 
which  is  not  strongly  religious.  Either  foreign  subjugation,  or 
domestic  despotism,  or  maniac  anarchy,  has  ever  overtaken  the 
godless  nation ;  and,  in  all  times,  the  nation  that  had  a  faith, 
that  reverenced  an  oath,  has  put  a  bridle  in  the  teeth  of  the 
unbelieving  peoples. 

The  only  other  department  of  proof  to  which  w^e  can  refei 
is  that  of  the  testimony  of  great  individual  thinkers.  It  is  in- 
teresting to  note  how,  we  might  say  without  exception,  the 
great  thinkers  and  workers  of  all  time  have  agreed  in  this. 
Consider  the  amount  and  the  nature  of  the  evidence  to  be  de- 
rived from  that  one  source,  the  construction  of  ancient  and 


56  THE     SO  CIAL    LIFE. 

modern  politics.  Every  legislator  requires  this  as  his  bower- 
anchor;  every  man  who  attempts  to  establish  a  common- 
wealth, or  to  rule  an  empire,  commences  with  religion.  That 
he  was  himself  an  irreligious  man,  or  skeptic,  mattered  little. 
Whether  he  were  a  Zoroaster  or  Mahomet,  or  a  Ptolemy 
Lagus  or  Napoleon,  it  was  the  same ;  the  point  of  the  national 
pyramid,  each  felt,  must  point  to  heaven.  And  the  testimony 
of  thinkers  is  equally  explicit.  Plato  virtually  makes  religior 
the  base  of  his  republic;  and  Mr.  Carlyle  is,  in  our  day,  again 
proclaiming,  in  what  manner,  or  with  what  likelihood  of  suc- 
cess, we  say  not,  the  same  truth.  In  one  of  Bacon's  Essays, 
you  find  his  authority,  and  that  of  Cicero,  like  one  sword  with 
two  edges,  knit  together.  The  fact  is  explicitly  stated  by 
Montesquieu ;  and,  while  the  influence  of  what  was  or  was  not 
named  the  positive  philosophy  has  here  affected  injuriously 
our  last  schools  of  political  economy,  even  they  are  compelled 
to  lend  their  indirect  suffrage.  One  of  the  most  healthy- 
thinkers  of  recent  times,  Thomas  Chalmers,  gave  the  strength 
of  his  life  to  enunciate  and  enforce  the  momentous  doctrine. 

Our  initial  proposition  being  .established,  we  proceed  to  in- 
quire in  what  way,  in  the  internal  arrangements  of  society,  a 
pantheistic  theory  of  things  would  naturally  and  logically  be 
embodied :  we  shall  then  note  briefly  the  basis  on  which  Chris- 
tianity places  social  relations. 

The  works  of  Mr.  Carlyle,  in  one  great  aspect  of  them,  are 
a  series  of  endeavors,  or  rather  one  great  connected  endeavor, 
to  bring  the  state  into  approximation  to  that  condition  in  which 
rank,  power,  and  possession,  would  be  exactly  graduated  by 
ability.  And  this  were  a  result  fraught  with  so  many  benefi- 
cent consequences  that,  it  must  be  acknowledged,  that  the  ex- 
tent to  which  he  has  succeeded  in  striking  and  infusing  his 
great  idea  into  cotemporary  literature  and  the  public  mind  in 


TIIESOCIALLIFE.  6^ 

general  is  to  be  considered  a  grateful  and  promising  achieve- 
ment. It  is,  however,  an  indubitable  fact,  that  an  error  in  the 
original  axioms  on  which  any  system  of  teaching  is  based, 
although  in  the  course  of  that  teaching  separate  and  partial 
truths  may  find  advocacy  or  enforcement,  will  show  itself  in 
any  attempt  to  reduce  theory  to  practice,  and  will  most  likely, 
we  might  perhaps  say  certainly,  neutralize  or  poison  the  very 
truths  amid  which,  erewhile,  it  lurked  in  concealment.  And 
thus  we  conceive  it  to  be  with  the  teaching  of  Mr.  Carlyle :  it 
contains  invaluable  truth,  yet  in  the  original  fountain  was  a 
poison-drop,  which  will  be  found,  if  its  streams  ever  come  to 
irrigate  tlie  general  fields  of  life,  to  kill  the  plants  it  was  ex- 
pected to  nourish,  and  leave  a  sterile  waste  where  men  looked 
for  the  bloom  and  the  opulence  of  a  garden  of  God. 

Tlie  fundamental  axiom  of  that  pantheism  of  which  we 
recognize  Mr.  Carlyle  as  the  great  living  advocate,  we  found 
to  be,  that  man  is  divine.  The  great  man  is  he  in  whom  the 
divinity  is  most  clearly  manifested.  This  being  so,  how,  we 
ask,  would  that  graduation  proceed  of  which  we  have  spoken  ? 
It  would  tend  altogether  to  the  exaltation  of  the  great  man ; 
if  such  a  thing  as  worship  could  exist,  it  would  be  worship  of 
him :  if  a  theory  of  government  were  to  be  propounded,  it 
would  be  that  in  which  his  wisdom  ruled  without  let,  and  his 
will  was  absolute.  If  my  fellow  is  more  divine  than  I,  it  is 
right  that  I  bow  down  to  him,  it  is  right  that  I  serve  him :  and 
it  is  no  difficult  task  to  show,  that  the  good  things  of  this  life 
will  plenteously  result  to  me  from  my  doing  so.  In  one  word 
if  well  traced  out,  the  legitimate  social  theory  of  pantheism 
would  be  despotism.  In  the  course  of  this  volume,  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  mark,  in  certain  important  departments  of 
social  life,  the  development  of  this  theory,  and  to  discover 
whether  Mr.  Carlyle's  own  ultimate  teaching  confirms  our 
3* 


68  THE    SOCIAL    LIFE. 

view ;  for  the  present,  we  can  merely  state  it  without  exposing 
defects  or  considering  advantages. 

Christianity  is  able  to  accept  from  Mr.  Carlyle  all  that  is 
of  value  in  his  doctrines,  while  avoiding  those  perils  with  which 
they  would  prove  unable  to  contend.  It  bids  me  not  to  bow 
down  to  any  fellow  mortal ;  yet  it  may  enjoin  my  according 
him  all  respect  consistent  with  manliness ;  it  bids  me  not  to 
take  commands  from  any  absolute  will  with  the  servile  cringe 
of  the  slave,  yet  it  makes  room  for  hearty  and  strenuous 
obedience.  All  this  it  does  by  the  recognition  of  two  great 
doctrines :  the  absolute  sovereignty  of  God ;  and  the  relative 
sovereignty,  yet  absolute  equality,  of  man.  It  sets  the  world, 
so  to  speakj,  in  a  particular  point  of  view,  and  by  so  doing 
makes  every  thing  plain ;  it  represents  it  as  the  Lord's,  as  a 
field,  or  a  vineyard,  in  which  He  has  certain  grand  objects  to 
accomplish.  It  shows  every  man  to  be  a  servant;  and  to 
every  man  who  is  a  dutiful  servant,  it  dispenses  an  equality  of 
honor,  and  in  certain  grand  particulars,  nay,  in  all,  though  we 
can  not  now  stay  to  make  good  the  point,  an  equality  of  re- 
ward. To  endeavor  to  define  and  enumerate  the  ends  which 
Divine  Providence  has  in  view  with  man  in  this  world,  were  a 
rash  and  impotent  attempt.  But  we  certainly  know  that  the 
great  end  of  all  things  is  the  glory  of  God ;  that  His  glory  is 
manifested  in  the  perfection  of  His  creatures ;  and  that  He,  in 
His  benignity,  has  ordained  that  an  integral  part  of  perfection 
is  joy,  that  the  higher  man  or  nation  ascends  on  that  path,  the 
richer  are  the  fruits  and  the  more  beautiful  the  flowers  which 
line  the  way.  And  it  is  not  impossible,  with  the  light  of  rev- 
elation and  the  voice  of  history,  to  discern  the  grand  outline 
of  that  method  by  which  God  has  ordained  and  commanded 
man,  in  slow  progress  through  the  centuries,  to  work  out  his 
perfection  as  a  species.     On  the  one  hand,  he  has  a  freedom 


THESOCIALLIFE.  59 

from  God,  which  it  is  his  duty  to  preserve,  which  he  dare  not 
alienate;  on  the  other,  in  order  to  his  progress,  God  has  re- 
vealed to  him,  first,  by  the  fact  of  an  experienced  necessity, 
and,  second,  by  the  direct  sanction  of  His  word,  that  civil  gov- 
ernment, the  more  or  less  complete  merging  of  individual 
freedom  in  public  law,  is  also  a  divine  ordinance.  In  the 
former  of  these  it  is  implied,  that  every  faculty  which  God  has 
bestowed  upon  or  committed  to  the  individual  perform  its  full 
and  appropriate  work,  or  reach  its  perfect  and  congenial  de- 
velopment ;  that  the  intellectual  powers  have  a  fair  sphere  for 
their  operation,  that  the  conscience  be  untrammeled,  that  the 
will  exercise  its  legitimate  authority  over  thought  and  action, 
and  that  each  capacity  of  enjoyment  be  duly  gratified.  All 
this  we  hold  to  be  implied  in  the  perfection  of  individual  free- 
dom ;  and  all  this  Christianity  guarantees  in  its  declaration  of 
the  essential  equality,  the  blood-unity,  of  all  men,  and  its  com- 
mand that  all  work  be  done,  that  every  faculty  operate,  w^ith 
might.  In  the  latter,  in  the  ordinance  of  civil  government,  it 
is  implied  that  every  man  jDcrform  not  only  his  own  primary 
and  direct  duty,  but  that  he  subserve  the  performance  of  all 
other  duty ;  that  he  play,  so  to  speak,  into  the  hand  of  every  other 
man  ;  that  he  make  way  where  he  is  himself  superfluous,  that 
he  obey  w^here  his  service  is  necessary  to  the  performance  of  a 
duty  which  he  is  himself  incompetent  to  effect ;  in  one  word, 
that  he  recognize  as  right  all  that  graduation  of  rank  according 
to  work  done,  which  nature  tends  to  effect.  This  is  the  true 
theory  of  divine  right :  that  the  real,  the  natural  power  be 
obeyed.  Let  it  not  be  imagined  that  this  is  a  divine  sanction 
of  any  particular  form,  or  any  particular  depository  of  gov- 
erning power ;  Christianity  does  not  change  a  living  body  into 
a  mummy  or  petrifaction,  and  command  men  to  obey  it ;  it 
sanctions  the  power,  and  if  the  time  has  come  for  this  power 


60  THE     SOCIAL     LIFE. 

to  be  born,  the  giant  child  may  hear  its  sanctioning  voice  in 
the  womb  of  futurity,  and  tear  its  way,  amid  what  throes  so- 
ever, to  life  and  inheritance.  In  the  darkest  and  most  bar- 
barous times,  this  social  theory  of  Christianity  will  be  a  guid- 
ing light ;  when  civilization  shall  be  completed,  when  freedom 
and  law  shall  have  become  one,  and  not  till  then,  it  shall  have 
been  wrought  out. 

In  the  following  pages  we  shall  have  occasion  to  trace  a  few 
of  its  gradual  developments ;  and,  first  of  all,  we  shall  consider 
that  defamed  agency  which  yet  Isaac  Taylor  scruples  not  to 
call  the  latest  impersonation  of  the  spirit  of  Christianity, 
Christian  Philanthropy. 


PART    TWO. 

EXPOSITION   AND  ILLUSTRATION, 


BOOK  ONE. 

CHRISTIANITY  THE  BASIS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

FIRST    PRINCIPLES. 

OP   CHRISTIAN  PHTLANTHROPT,  HERO-WORSHIP,  AND  THE    ORIGIN 
AKD  EXD    OP   LAW. 

Proposing,  in  this  book,  to  glance  generally  at  a  few  of  the 
characteristic  social  agencies  of  our  time,  it  sec7ins  to  us  an 
orderly  and  perspicuous  method  to  regard  modern  Christian 
philanthropy  as  a  fitting  representative  of  those  agencies,  and 
its  consideration,  for  that  reason,  a  meet  introduction  to  their 
cursory  survey.  We  shall  not  allege  it  to  be  a  principal 
agency  in  our  present  and  prospective  social  system.  But  we 
do  think  that,  in  its  treatment,  we  are  brought  eye  to  eye 
with  that  problem  on  which  the  future  of  the  free  nations  de- 
pends ;  and  that  an  inquiry  into  its  fundamental  principles, 
and  a  survey  of  its  development,  lead  us  by  a  natural  path  to 
the  full  statement  and  comprehension  of  that  problem.  With 
this  statement  we  purpose  concluding  the  present  division  of 
our  subject.  We  consider,  then,  in  the  outset,  the  essential 
and  fundamental  ideas  of  Christian  Philanthropy. 

We  do  not  affirm  that  there  is  any  thing  positively  new  in 


64  FIRST     PRINCIPLES. 

the  idea  of  this  philanthropy.  It  is  as  old  as  love.  Its  his- 
tory began  to  be  written  in  the  first  tear  which  fell  from  a 
human  eye,  over  one  whose  only  claim  was  pity,  and  whose 
only  plea  was  sorrow.  But  we  shall  not  be  required  to  prove 
that  there  is  such  a  thing  in  our  day  as  "  the  philanthropic 
movement :"  we  may  safely  allege  the  fact  that  simple  pity, 
love  for  the  wretched  as  such,  has  become  a  more  formal  and 
recognizable  power  in  our  time  than  heretofore.  Of  this  we 
speak. 

That  our  conception  of  Christian  Philanthropy  may  be 
clearly  perceived,  and  that  it  may  be  known  at  once  what 
we  believe  to  be  its  true  nature,  and  what  we  are  willing  to 
stand  by  as  its  defensible  positions,  we  shall  state,  in  four 
categories,  what  we  deem  its  grand  fundamental  proposi- 
tions. 

I.  In  the  system  of  human  affairs,  there  is  a  distinct,  trace- 
able, and  indispensable  function,  to  be  performed  by  com- 
passion. 

II.  All  men  are,  in  a  definable  sense,  equal.  All  human 
law  is  grounded  on  expediency  ;  on  what  is  temporal  and  not 
eternal.     Revenge  is  foreign  to  the  idea  of  law. 

III.  It  is  not  a  possible  case  that  hatred  be  the  highest  and 
most  reasonable  feeling  with  which  one  human  being  can  re- 
gard another.  There  can  not,  upon  earth,  exist,  in  the  human 
form,  any  one  whom  it  is  not  noble  and  holy  to  love. 

IV.  It  is  impossible,  in  this  world,  that  the  traces  of  the 
divine  image  be  absolutely  obliterated  from  the  human  soul. 
God  has  not  revealed  to  man  any  period  at  which  it  is  either 
incumbent  on,  or  lawful  for  him,  to  abandon  hope  and  effort 
that  his  brother  may  attain  to  that  higher  nature  which  is  at 
once  the  restoration  and  elevation  of  humanity. 

These  categories  are  closely  connected  with  each  other,  and 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  05 

a  more  searchitg  analysis  might  doubtless  aflTord  clearer  lines 
of  demarcation;  but,  for  practical  purposes,  we  think  they 
will  serve.  The  first  is  the  general  declaration  with  which 
philanthropy,  as  such,  sets  out.  The  second  leads  us  to  define 
its  true  relation  to  justice.  The  third  is  intimately  associated 
with  the  second,  and  is  the  Christian  rule  of  feeling,  as  ex- 
pressed by  our  Saviour.  The  fourth  indicates  the  rationale 
of  every  effort  toward  reclamation  of  the  criminal  or  con- 
demned. 

At  its  first  arising.  Philanthropy  was  hailed  with  acclama- 
tion. Without  hesitation,  apparently  without  question,  and 
almost  with  universal  voice,  men  affirmed  its  light  to  be  holy, 
and  its  influence,  of  necessity,  benign.  Be  the  cause,  how- 
ever, what  it  may,  we  now  find  matters  altered.  Philan- 
thropy, it  is  true,  has  pervaded  the  nation,  and  more  is  done 
at  the  simple  cry  of  compassion  than  was  ever  done  before  ; 
but  it  has  been  assailed  with  vituperation  and  contempt, 
scarcely  condescending  to  argue ;  while  it  furnishes  every  petty 
novelist  and  scribbler  with  subjects  of  caricature,  and  targets 
for  small  arrows  that  stick  because  they  are  viscous  with 
venom,  not  because  they  are  pointed  with  wit.  The  chief 
argumentative  assailant  of  philanthropy  is  a  man  whose 
words  must  always  deserve  calm  and  thorough  consideration, 
whose  name  alone  is  a  battery — Mr.  Carlyle.  Caricaturists 
and  small  wits  might  be  left  to  shift  for  themselves,  after  we 
had  demonstrated,  if  that  proved  to  be  m  our  power,  the  value 
and  reasonableness  of  philanthropy ;  but  to  leave  them  thus 
altogether,  were  to  fall  into  the  mistake  of  supposing  that 
nothing  can  injure  which  has  little  force,  or  that  men  are  not 
in  the  habit,  every  day,  and  scores  of  times  every  day,  of 
holding  apples  so  near  to  their  eyes  that  they  shut  out  the 
light  of  the  sun.     We  consider,  therefore,  a  few  words  (and 


66  FIRST    PRINCIPLES. 

they  shall  be  as  few  as  we  can  possibly  make  them)  not 
wholly  wasted  on  the  subject  of  the  ridicule  to  which  philan- 
thropy is  in  our  day  exposed  :  they  may  prove  applicable  to 
the  sense  of  the  ridiculous  as  exercised  on  every  kind  of  relig- 
ious or  moral  action  or  emotion. 

We  are  by  no  means  among  those  who  utter  a  sweeping 
condemnation  against  all  laughter  in  the  serious  provinces  of 
human  affairs :  we  consider  the  sense  of  the  ridiculous  ex 
tremely  valuable  in  a  man  and  a  nation.  In  every  depart- 
ment of  art,  of  literature,  and  of  life,  it  prunes  a  fantastic  or 
grotesque  exuberance,  keeping  down,  to  give  it  in  one  word, 
excessive  idiosyncrasy.  It  is,  by  its  nature,  in  close  league 
with  common  sense ;  it  is  the  mortal  foe  of  bombast,  senti- 
mentality, softness,  and  every  sort  of  pretense.  We  regard 
the  strong  sense  of  the  ridiculous  inherited  by  the  English 
people  as  one  of  the  healthiest  characteristics.  It  may  at 
present  threaten  to  degenerate  into  universal  titter ;  but,  in 
its  native  strength  and  soundness,  it  preserves  us  in  a  fine 
mean  between  the  French  and  the  Germans;  between  the 
"  gesticulating  nation  that  has  a  heart,  and  wears  it  on  its 
sleeve,"  and  the  nation  that  thinks  walls,  and  holds  the  empire 
of  the  air.'*  We  imagine  there  is  much  in  our  literature  at 
present  which  might  be  bettered  by  a  little  smart  satire :  it  is 
a  tonic  we  can  not  well  do  without. 

And  we  claim  no  exemption  for  philanthropy  from  the 
restraining  or  tempering  power  of  a  sound  sense  of  the  ridic- 

*  "  Gentlemen,  tliink  the  wall :" — these  were  the  words  in  which 
Fichte  commenced  his  philosophic  lectures  in  Jena.  However  idealis- 
tic, we  can  scarcely  conceive  a  British  audience  not  being  touched 
with  a  feeling  of  drollery  by  the  words:  the  Germans  sat  like  stucco. 
Let  it  not  be  thought  from  this  remark  that  I  intend  the  faintest  dis- 
respect for  the  majestic  genius  and  noble  character  of  Fichte. 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  C7 

ulous,  resulting  in  manly  and  discriminating  satire.  As- 
suredly, like  every  other  human  thing,  it  may  run  into  absurd- 
ity or  excess,  and,  in  particular  instances,  may  furnish  legiti- 
mate objects  of  caricature. 

But  satire  has  its  laws :  as  sure  and  imperative  laws  as  any 
other  species  of  composition.  And  in  these  it  certainly  is  in- 
cluded, both  that  it  must  never  be  absolutely  in  error,  and 
that  it  must  never  be  absolutely  frivolous.  There  is  a  national 
mirth  which  comports  with  earnestness  and  reverence,  and  is 
beautiful  as  the  smile  of  natural  and  fearless  strength ;  but 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  laughter  of  national  paralysis,  and 
what  more  ghastly  than  that  1  Laughter  is  noble  and  profit- 
able ;  but  not  that  of  the  madman  when  he  sets  the  house  on 
fire,  or  that  of  the  fool  who  goes  to  wedding  and  funeral  with 
the  same  mindless  grin.  Its  oflSce  is  to  prune  the  excrescences 
that  will  adhere  to  the  best  of  human  things,  to  prevent  stupid 
ity,  pretension,  or  weak  enthusiasm,  from  attaching  their  dis- 
torting or  encumbering  insignia  to  any  form  of  truth.  But  it 
becomes  at  once  of  malign  influence,  if  its  attacks  menace  the 
truth  itself — if,  in  cutting  away  excess  of  foliage,  it  draws  the 
vital  sap  from  the  tree — if,  in  curing  the  squint,  it  cuts  out  the 
eje.  Sound  satire  should  clear  from  all  stains  the  statue  of 
truth ;  but  it  should  make  men  love  to  gaze  on  that  statue  the 
more.  And,  since  satire  is  of  prevailing  influence,  since  it  acts 
upon  the  mind  with  a  more  subtle  insinuation,  and  often  exerts 
a  greater  power  of  unconscious  mental  modification  even  than 
argument,  it  is  of  serious  importance  that  this  fact  be  constantly 
borne  in  mind. 

Now,  we  do  think  that  in  the  caricatures  we  have  had  of 
philanthropy,  this  fundamental  law  has  been  infringed.  There 
has  been  a  fatal  want  of  all  discrimination  of  the  true  from  the 
false ;  qualities  radically  and  perennially  holy,  human  in  the 


68  FIRST    PRINCIPLES. 

noblest  sense,  and  dignifying  humanity,  have  been  confounded 
with  their  morbid  excess,  or  left  to  appear  altogether  absurd 
and  ignoble.     One  or  two  words  will  make  this  plain. 

There  are  three  circles  in  which,  in  his  life  on  earth,  and  the 
discharge  of  his  earthly  duties,  a  man  may  act.  The  first  is 
that  of  self :  one  must  always,  by  duty  and  necessity,  do  more 
for  himself,  or  in  connection  with  himself,  than  for  any  one 
else.  The  second  is  that  of  family  and  friends,  of  all  those 
who  have  a  clairii  on  one  by  blood  or  friendship :  within  this 
circle  a  man  must  perform  certain  duties,  or  he  meets  univer- 
sal reprobation  and  contempt.  The  third  is  that  of  humanity 
in  general.  We  shall  not  insult  our  readers  by  proving  to 
them  that  this  is  truly  and  properly  a  sphere  of  human  duty ; 
although  there  are  not  wanting  writings  in  our  day  whose  ten- 
dency seems  to  indicate  it  as  an  insult  to  suppose  one  to  doubt 
the  reverse :  we  shall  not  endeavor  to  eliminate  the  fact,  which 
used  to  be  considered  as  good  as  settled,  that  a  man  is  by 
nature  united  in  mysterious  but  emiobling  bonds  with  every 
other  man,  and  that  it  is  not  one  of  the  characteristics  of  a 
high  state  of  humanity,  that  it  be  separated  into  families  and 
coteries,  each  attending  to  its  own  affairs,  like  so  many  families 
of  wolves  in  the  pine  forest ;  we  shall  presume  our  readers  to 
agree  that  severance,  disunion,  isolation,  selfishness,  are  symp- 
toms of  disease  in  the  human  race,  and  that  the  evolution  of 
the  ages,  if  it  tends  to  any  consummation  whatever,  must  tend 
to  their  termination.  Not  only,  however,  is  this  sphere  noble ; 
we  fearlessly  assert,  still  without  deeming  proof  necessary, 
that  it  is  this  third  sphere  where,  save  in  rare  instances,  noble- 
ness as  such  has  existence.  A  man  who  performs  well  his 
duties  to  himself,  who  has  no  higher  object  than  that  he  may 
be  undisturbed  and  happy,  we  shall  not  call  noble.  In  the 
second  circle  "w  e  find  many  of  the  loveliest  spectacles  that  our 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  60 

eartn  can  show :  the  afTcction  of  brothers  and  of  sisters,  the 
self-sacrificing  nobleness  of  friendship,  the  sacred  beauty  of  a 
mother's  love.  But,  leaving  the  question  of  friendship  (which, 
indeed,  holds,  in  its  pure  form,  of  the  high  and  the  immortal), 
we  can  not  hesitate  to  place  domestic  feelings  and  spectacles, 
as  such,  among  the  natural  productions  of  our  planet;  the 
loveliest  perhaps  we  have  to  show,  but  of  a,  beauty  precisely 
analogous  to  that  of  the  rose  and  the  fountain,  and  essentially 
pertaining  to  time.  By  neglecting  family  duties,  one  becomes 
less  than  a  man  ;  by  performing  them  never  so  well,  he  comes 
not  to  merit  applause.  Distinctive  nobleness  commences  in 
the  third  circle.  It  is  when  one  rises  above  self  and  family, 
and  looks  abroad  on  the  family  of  mankind,  that  he  takes  the 
attitude  which  in  a  man  is  essentially  great:  when  he  no 
longer  feels  around  him  the  little  necessities  which  compel,  or 
the  little  pleasures  which  allure,  and  yet  is  able  to  contemplate 
men  as  a  great  brotherhood  of  immortals,  with  a  gaze  analo- 
gous to  that  of  Him  in  whose  image  he  is  made ;  when  he 
passes  beyond  what  he  shares  with  the  lower  orders  of  crea- 
tion, and  soars  to  those  regions  where,  as  an  intelligent,  God- 
knowing  creature,  he  may  sit  among  the  angels ;  when  he  can 
look  on  the  world  through  the  light  of  eternity ;  then  it  is  that 
he  does  what  it  is  the  distinctive  privilege  and  nobleness  of 
man  on  this  earth  to  do,  what  marks  him  as  animated  by  those 
emotions  to  which,  under  God,  humanity  owes  all  it  has 
achieved  in  time.  All  this  is  so  plain,  and  so  absolutely  cer- 
tain, that  statement  embraces  proof. 

What  excuse,  then,  could  be  plead  for  a  satire  which  endan- 
gered this  peculiar  nobleness  of  humanity,  and  perpetually 
read  to  man  the  lesson  that  he  should  mind  himself,  or,  at 
most,  his  family,  or,  at  very  most,  some  interesting  family 
T^hich  he  fancied,  much  as  he  might  rabbits  or  pigeons  ?     A 


10  FIRSTPRINCIPLES. 

very  superfluous  lesson,  to  be  sure !  For  one  man  or  woman 
who  neglects  self  or  family  from  actual  desire  to  promote  the 
welfare  of  the  human  race,  ten  thousand,  at  the  very  least 
neglect  the  latter  for  the  former.  Human  indolence  and  self 
ishness  require  no  aid  from  satire  to  make  men  ever  sink 
back  into  their  own  little  circles,  into  their  own  little  hearts ! 
Go  out  to  your  lawn  in  the  evening  after  a  shower,  when  the 
earthworms  are  looking  out,  and  commence  to  lecture  them 
on  the  paramount  importance  of  home  duties :  how  it  is  proper 
to  keep  their  holes  tidy,  and  attend  to  the  respectable  up- 
bringing of  their  children ;  how  they  have  duties  enough  at 
their  own  doors,  and  it  can  not  be  too  earnestly  enforced  on 
them  that  they  ought  not  to  look  much  toward  the  stars;  just 
beginning  to  come  out,  and  so  very  far  away :  but  spare  your 
sweet  breath,  and  abandon  the  quite  superfluous  task  of  bid- 
ding men  cultivate  selfishness,  and  withdraw  their  eyes  from 
looking  in  love  toward  the  ends  of  the  earth.  Holy  and 
beautiful  are  home  duties,  and  home  delights ;  these  may  no- 
wise be  neglected  or  scorned:  but  God  did  not  kindle  the 
smile  of  the  winter  hearth,  or  the  warmer  smile  of  the  true 
wife ;  God  did  not  fill  home  with  the  musical  voices  of  chil- 
dren, and  the  thousand  "  hopes,  and  fears  that  kindle  hope,  an 
undistinguishable  throng,"  that  these  should  be  his  all  to  a 
man,  that  no  voice  should  reach  him  from  the  outer  world. 
These  are  a  solace  after  his  work,  these  are  rewards  of  his 
toil,  but  these  can  never  furnish  him  the  tasks  that  mark  him 
distinctively  as  a  man.  It  is  when  we  widen  our  sphere  of 
vision  and  of  love — a  sphere  which  will  go  on  widening  to 
eternity,  and  not  when  we  contract  it — that  we  become  noble 
and  man-like. 

We  turn  now  to  our  coteraporary  satire.       Do  we  not 
meet,  on  all  hands,  with  forms  of  ridicule — with  quiet  sneers, 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  7l 

with  rude  horse-lauglitcr,  with  elaborate  figures,  of  high  broad 
brows,  and  breasts  calm  and  cold  as  marble,  and  with  sign- 
painter  daubs,  that  are  human  only  in  bearing  human  names, 
but  otherwise  as  dead  as  spoiled  canvas — all  meant  to  raise 
the  laugh  against  a  philanthropy  that  would  look  abroad  ]  We 
desire  no  stop  to  be  put  to  the  laughter ;  only  let  care  hi 
taken,  lest  while  we  laugh,  our  unconscious  hearts  are  robbed 
of  the  purest  spark  of  celestial  fire  lingering  within.  When 
we  look  at  the  delicate  and  living  lines  in  the  stately  statue 
of  a  St.  John,  or  at  the  mechanic  movements,  utterly  re- 
moved from  all  possibility  of  sympathy,  and  to  be  condemned 
as  abortive  and  inconceivable,  by  every  canon  of  mere  criti- 
cism, in  a  Mrs.  Jellyby,  let  us  beware  lest  we  recoil  too 
strongly  from  the  fuiely  and  almost  soundly  satirized  excess 
of  the  one,  and  from  the  hideous  and  unmitigated  atrocity  of 
the  other,  into  what  is,  in  the  former,  however  painted,  after 
all  but  human  passion,  or  into  what  is  offered  as  the  right 
morality  instead  of  the  other,  a  silly  and  simpering  good-na- 
ture, that  never  looks  beyond  its  own  little  ring,  and  such 
objects  as  can  look  well,  and  draw  mawkish  tears  in  the  pages 
of  a  novel.  Let  it  be  remembered,  also,  that  whatever  may 
be  the  case  with  morbid  idiosyncrasy,  it  is  in  general  the  heat 
which  warms  most  that  casts  its  warming  influence  farthest ; 
the  man  who  loves  all  men,  will  have  love  to  embrace  his 
neighborhood.  The  cottages  of  Cardington  did  not  suffei 
because  Howard  was  visiting  the  sick-beds  on  the  shores  of 
the  Bosphorus. 

These  words  can  not  be  considered  uncalled  for.  Many,  we 
fear,  when  their  hearts,  in  the  first  ardor  of  youth,  were  begin- 
ning to  expand  with  holy  desires,  that  told  of  their  brother- 
hood or  sisterhood  with  earth's  nobles  and  standard-bearers, 
have  felt  them  contract  again  to  the  mere  everyday  feelings 


72  FIRST     PRINCIPLES. 

of  home  and  neighborhood,  under  the  influence  of  such  satire 
as  we  have  been  here  indicating  ;  satire  which  would  laugh  at 
Plato  as  he  trod,  afar  from  men,  the  lone  mountains  of  thought, 
which  would  keep  David  ever  at  the  sheepfold,  and  John  ever 
at  the  net.     Vv^e  turn  now  from  this  view  of  the  subject. 

Philanthropy,  we  have  said,  has  been  attacked  by  Mr.  Car- 
lyle.  It  has  been  attacked  with  weapons  of  argument,  and 
with  those  of  fiercest  scorn,  declared  "  a  phosphorescence  and 
unclean,"  and  rejected  from  among  the  agencies  to  be  regarded 
with  hope  by  those  who  desire  the  common  wfeal.  We  con- 
sider him  to  have  erred ;  but,  well  assured  as  we  are  that  he 
loves  men  as  only  a  mighty  man  can  love,  we  deem  any  thing 
he  may  say  on  the  subject  worthy  of  attention,  and  we  con- 
trovert his  opinions  with  deliberation  and  care.  By  consider- 
ing the  case,  too,  in  the  precise  light  in  which  he  views  it,  we 
come  directly  and  conveniently  to  the  heart  of  the  whole  ques- 
tion, to  the  determination  of  the  relation  borne  by  philanthropy 
to  justice.  This  relation  we  shall  endeavor  to  define  with  what 
we  can  attain  of  scientific  accuracy. 

With  very  much  of  what  Mr.  Carlyle  says  on  the  subject 
of  the  treatment  of  criminals,  we  perfectly  agree ;  much,  in- 
deed, which  he  alleges  can,  we  think,  be  shown  to  be  correct 
and  consistent,  only  when  interpreted  in  accordance  with  our 
theory.  But  the  difference  between  us  is  decided.  Our  view 
of  the  matter  leads  us  to  what  seems  a  satisfactory  defense  of 
that  philanthropy  which  Mr.  Carlyle  execrates ;  and  when  we 
discover  his  positive  conception  of  the  origin  of  human  law 
we  can  deliberately  and  decisively  afiirm  our  belief  of  its  in 
correctness.  We  plainly  assert  that  every  man  who  is  pun- 
ished by  any  constituted  authority  on  this  earth,  who  is  put  to 
death,  or  who  is  fined  sixpence,  can  be  so  treated,  reasonably 
and  rightfully,  solely  because  of  the  "  effects,"  too  varied  to  be 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  73 

noted  for  the  present,  of  his  aetions  on  his  fellows  and  their 
prospects.  Mr.  Carlyle  has  these  words: — "Example,  cfTects 
upon  the  public  mind,  effects  upon  this  and  upon  that — all  this 
is  mere  appendage  and  accident."  We  deliberately  think  that, 
to  constitute  revenge  the  true  theory  of  justice  between  man 
and  man,  the  human  being  must  be  at  once  an  atheist  and  a 
savage.  Mr.  Carlyle  speaks  thus : — "  Revenge,  my  friends ! — 
revenge,  and  the  natural  hatred  of  scoundrels,  and  the  ineradi- 
cable tendency  to  revancher  one's-self  upon  them,  and  pay  them 
what  they  have  merited ;  this  is  for  evermore  intrinsically  a 
correct,  and  even  a  divine  feeling  in  the  mind  of  every  man." 
And  again,  after  one  of  his  own  burning  metaphoric  passages, 
in  which  a  man,  in  the  fury  of  passion,  is  represented  as  rea- 
sonably slaying  another: — "My  humane  friends,  I  perceive 
this  same  sacred  glow  of  divine  wrath,  or  authentic  monition 
at  first-hand  from  God  himself,  to  be  the  foundation  for  all 
criminal  law,"  &c.  We  can  no  longer  doubt  that  Mr.  Car- 
lyle's  theory  of  law  is  that  of  revenge,  and  this  we  proceed  to 
question.  Let  no  one  imagine,  while  we  do  so,  that  we  im- 
pute to  him  all  which  may  be  logically  extorted  from  his 
premises. 

The  explicative  word  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  whole  system  of  be- 
lief is  "  hero-worship :"  the  immense  debt  we  nationally  owe 
him,  and  the  unsoundness  which  may,  we  think,  be  shown  to 
characterize  very  much  of  what  he  has  written,  are  alike  trace- 
able to  his  view  of  the  individual  man,  and  the  relation  he 
bears  to  his  fellows.  With  his  views  here,  his  theory  of  hu 
man  law  accords,  in  perfect  philosophic  consistency.  We 
must,  therefore,  subject  to  an  examination  what  we  understand 
him  to  mean  by  "  hero-worship."  And  we  are  the  more  will- 
ing to  do  so  at  this  early  stage  of  our  progress,  because  we 
deem  a  conclusive  exhibition  of  inaccuracy  in  his  idea  of  man 

4 


74  FIRST     PRINCIPLES. 

sufficient  to  overthrow  all,  or  almost  all,  the  errors  which  we 
shall  have  to  combat  in  these  pages. 

Mr.  Carlyle  cares  little  for  metaphysical  supports  for  his 
opinions ;  he  has  long  listened  to  the  gr  it  voices  of  life  and 
history ;  but  we  think  his  early  works  aff*./.d  us  the  philosophic 
explanation  of  his  doctrine  of  hero-worship.  On  a  pantheistic 
?cheme  of  things,  it  seems  unassailable.  God  being  all,  and 
ill  being  God,  and  a  great  man  being  the  highest  visible  mani- 
festation, and  as  it  were  concentration  of  the  universal  divine 
essence,  it  is  right  to  pay  to  the  latter  the  ho^nage  of  an  un- 
bounded admiration,  to  render  him  the  only  kind  of  worship 
possible  to  men. 

But  we  mean  not  to  assail  Mr.  Carlyle  from  this  point :  we 
likewise  turn  to  the  voice  of  history  and  the  heart.  We  find 
him  tracing  all  worship  to  admiration  and  reverence  for  great 
men ;  we  find  him  asserting  that  the  limits  are  not  to  be  fixed 
for  the  veneration  with  which  to  regard  true  heroism  in  a  man. 
We  think  the  very  word  "  hero-worship"  utterly  inadmissible 
under  any  interpretation ;  we  assert  that  no  religion  ever  had 
its  origin  in  the  admiration  of  men.  Such  the  point  in  dis- 
pute ;  we  turn  to  history. 

Two  great  classes  may  be  distinguished  among  the  leaders 
of  mankind  :  those  who  have  exercised  their  influence  by  power 
not  moral,  and  those  who  made  an  appeal  to  the  moral  nature 
of  man.  We  contend  not  for  hair-breadth  distinctions,  we 
point  out  a  difference  which  one  glance  along  the  centuries 
will  show  to  be  real  and  broad.  By  the  first  class,  we  mean 
such  men  as  Napoleon,  Csesar,  and  Alexander ;  by  the  second, 
such  men  as  Mohammed,  Zoroaster,  and  Moses.  The  former 
were,  viewed  as  we  now  regard  them,  mere  embodiments  of 
force ;  their  soldiers  trusted  and  followed  them,  because  armies 
were  in  their  hands  as  thunderbolts.     The  captain  of  banditti, 


FIRSTPRINCIPLES.  76 

whose  eye  sees  farther,  and  whose  arm  smites  more  power- 
fully, than  those  of  his  followers,  exercises  an  influence  in  kind 
precisely  similar.  Any  thing  analogous  to  worship  is  foreign 
to  every  such  case ;  a  fact  rendered  palpable  and  undeniablB 
by  the  simple  reflection,  that  there  is  no  feeling  of  an  infinite 
respect,  as  due  to  what  is  infinite,  in  these  or  the  like  instances. 
A  supple-kneed  Greek  might  have  knelt  to  Alexander,  "if 
Alexander  wished,"  but  no  proclamations  could  make  a  Greek 
believe  that  Alexander  could  lay  his  hand  on  the  lightning,  or 
impart  life  to  an  insect.  There  is,  however,  another  class  of 
great  men,  with  whose  influence  on  their  fellows  worship  has 
been  ever  and  intimately  connected :  this  we  have  represented 
by  Mohammed,  Zoroaster,  and  Moses.  Here,  then,  the  point  at 
issue  comes  directly  before  us.  Worship  did  originate  in  each 
of  these  cases.  Whence  did  it  arise  1  ]\Iark  the  men  in  their 
work,  and  listen  to  their  words.  Mohammed  arose  and  said, 
"Ye  have  been  worshiping  dumb  idols,  that  are  no  gods: 
look  up  to  Allah ;  there  is  no  god  but  Allah !"  His  words  were 
not  in  vain.  Zoroaster  arose  and  said,  "  Ye  have  wandered 
from  the  truth  which  your  fathers  knew  and  followed ;  I  bring 
you  it  back  fresh  from  the  fountains  of  heaven."  Men  gave 
ear  to  him  also.  Moses  came  to  the  children  of  Israel,  and 
said,  "  I  AM  hath  sent  me  unto  you."  They  heard  the  word, 
and  followed  him  ;  through  the  cloven  surges,  into  the  howling 
wilderness,  whithersoever  he  listed.  Whom  did  men  obey 
and  worship  in  each  of  these  cases  1  Did  they  worship  Mo 
hammed,  when  he  pointed  his  finger  up  to  Allah  1  Did  they 
obey  the  commandments  of  Moses,  when  he  gave  them  the 
tables  where  God's  hand  had  traced  words  under  the  canopy 
of  cloud  and  fire  ?  Surely,  we  may  say  with  plainness  and 
certainty.  No.  It  was  ever  the  Sender  that  was  worshiped,  not 
the  sent ;  it  was  the  belief  in  his  alliance  with  an  exterior,  an 


16  FIRST     PRINCIPLES. 

infinite  power  which  won  him  his  influence.  He  has  brought 
us  fire  from  heaven  !  Such,  in  all  ages,  has  been  "the  cry  of 
men,  as  they  looked,  their  eyes  radiant  with  joy  and  thankful- 
ness, on  the  priest  or  prophet,  and  ranged  themselves  under 
his  guidance.  The  crown  and  scepter  which  men  have  most 
highly  honored,  and  most  loyally  obeyed,  have  always  been 
believed  to  have  come  down  from  heaven  ;  men  have  not  wor- 
shiped the  spirit  of  a  man,  or  the  breath  in  his  nostrils,  but 
the  Spirit  to  whom  he  turned  them.  We  suppose  the  rudest 
Polynesian  islander  regards  with  profounder  veneration  the 
black,  unchiseled,  eyeless  idol  to  which  he  bows  down,  than 
the  wisest  and  mightiest  chieftain  he  knows :  the  one  holds  of 
the  unseen  and  the  infinite,  the  other  he  can  look  upon,  and 
examine,  and  compass  in  his  thought ;  to  the  one  he  may  look 
in  the  day  of  battle,  of  the  other  he  will  think  in  the  shadow 
of  the  thunder-cloud ;  the  one  he  will  respect  and  obey,  the 
other  alone  will  he  worship.  Go  into  the  portrait-gallery  of 
the  Venetians,  and  mark  there  the  "  victorious  Doges  painted 
neither  in  the  toil  of  battle  nor  the  triumph  of  return,  nor  set 
forth  with  crowns  and  curtains  of  state,  but  kneeling  always 
crownless,  and  returning  thanks  to  God  for  his  help,  or  as 
priests  interceding  for  the  nation  in  its  afiliction."  That  spec- 
tacle illustrates  well  the  relative  regards  of  men  toward  their 
greatest,  and  toward  their  God. 

But  we  think  we  hear  some  one  indignantly  exclaim,  Why 
in  the  first  place,  all  this  is  the  extreme  of  triteness ;  and,  in 
the  second,  Mr.  Carlyle,  by  his  doctrine  of  hero-worship, 
means  really  nothing  more.  We  claim  no  great  originality 
in  this  matter,  and  certainly  the  truth  for  which  we  contend, 
whatever  it  wants,  is  clothed  in  the  majesty  of  age;  we  do 
not  suppose  even,  so  strictly  in  accordance  with  human  in- 
stinct do  we  deem  it,  that  it  sounded  very  strangely  in  the 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  71 

ears  of  mci:,  when  Moses,  bidding  them  turn  from  those 
whose  "breath  was  in  their  nostrils,"  was  commissioned  to 
write  it  down,  an  eternal  truth  for  eternal  remembrance,  in 
the  Book  of  Deuteronomy.  But,  however  this  may  be,  and 
even  though  our  expression  of  the  truth  might  be  sanctioned 
by  Mr.  Carlyle,  we  are  absolutely  assured  that  it  is  enough  to 
reverse  his  whole  theory  of  human  affairs.  We  find  it  per- 
fectly sufficient  to  show  that  the  term  hero-worship  is  an  ab- 
surdity, or  worse ;  to  indicate  the  true  significance  of  those 
phenomena  of  universal  history  which  Mr.  Carlyle  has  cate- 
gorized under  that  term ;  and  at  least  to  lead  to  the  over- 
throw of  his  theory  that  law  originates  in  revenge.  It  were 
difficult  to  compute  the  practical  importance  of  the  truths  to 
which,  under  the  name  of  hero-worship,  he  has  directed  our 
attention ;  but  we  must  remember  the  true  and  pregnant  re- 
mark of  IMackintosh,  that,  in  the  construction  of  theory,  par- 
tial truth  is  equivalent  to  error ;  and  while  we  would  not 
lose  one  grain  of  the  real  gold  Mr.  Carlyle  has  brought  to 
the  treasuries  of  the  world,  we  would  assign  to  all  its  own 
precise  place,  and  no  other.  We  grant  that  men  have  hon- 
ored men ;  we  grant  that,  in  every  department  of  human  en- 
deavor, the  point  to  be  aimed  at,  for  health,  prosperity,  and 
advancement,  is  to  obtain  qualified  men.  But,  when  Mr.  Car- 
lyle associates  this  fact  with  worship,  we  at  once  declare  him 
to  have  missed  an  all-important  distinction,  which  reveals  the 
highest  lessons  on  what  he  names  hero-worship.  This  dis- 
tinction is,  we  grant,  very  simple.  If  a  city  is  surrounded  by 
armed  squadrons  and  a  line  of  circumvallation,  if  the  towns- 
men are  in  terror  that  no  quarter  will  be  given  them,  but  yet, 
because  of  a  scorching  thirst  which  threatens  to  kill  them  by 
slow  torment,  are  proceeding  to  open  their  gates,  if  then  sud- 
denly one  of  their  number  discovers,  in  a  spot  hitherto  un- 


78  FIRSTPRINCI.LES. 

thought  of,  a  well  of  cool  and  abundant  water ;  if  his  fellow- 
citizens  crowd  around  him,  and  grasp  his  hand,  and  look  on 
him  with  tears  of  joy — what  shall  we  see  in  the  spectacle  ? 
Respect  for  him,  or  delight  at  the  discovery  of  the  fountain? 
Entirely  the  latter.  When  a  man  looking  heavenward,  cries 
out,  I  see  heaven  opened,  and  the  light  streams  forth — lift  up 
your  eyes,  and  see  it  for  yourselves ;  when  men  hear,  and 
believe,  and  bestir  themselves,  and  exclaim.  It  is  even  so: 
we  see  the  light,  we  feel  ourselves  being  drawn  nearer  to  it, 
and  may  est  thou  be  blessed  for  showing  it  to  us — what  shall 
we  see  in  the  spectacle  ?  Shall  we  t-egard  it  as  a  testimony 
of  man  to  man,  or  of  man  to  God  ]  Certainly  as  the  latter. 
We  look  with  Mr.  Carlyle  along  human  history  ;  we  see  men 
paying  the  highest  honor  to  their  Mohammeds  and  Zoroasters ; 
we  see  the  character  of  whole  epochs  molded  by  this  honor ; 
we  see  nations  gathering  round  these,  and  willing,  one  would 
say,  to  cement  for  them  thrones  in  their  hearts'  blood ;  and 
from  the  whole  we  learn,  not  the  divinity  of  man,  but  the 
fact  that  the  deep  human  instinct  has  in  all  ages  looked  for  a 
God.  The  louder  the  shouts  arise  of  what  Mr.  Carlyle  calls 
hero-worship,  the  more  definitely  and  decisively  will  they  pro- 
claim to  us  that  hero-worship,  in  any  permissible  or  definable 
sense,  is  contradicted  by  the  united  voice  of  humanity.  The 
two  highest  inferences  to  be  drawn  from,  all  the  great  phenom- 
ena so  magnificently  illustrated  by  Mr.  Carlyle  under  that 
name,  seem  to  us  to  be  these  two  : 

I.  In  the  breast  of  the  human  race  is  a  belief  in  an  Infinite 
Being. 

II.  There  has  been  perennially  in  the  heart  of  man  an  in- 
tense desire  to  reach  a  nearer  knowledge  of  God,  and  a  closer 
intimacy  with  Him — a  sublime  and  inextinguishable  yearning 
toward  a  divine  Father. 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  79 

The  first  of  these  propositions  is  one  of  nature's  strongest 
arguments  for  a  Deity ;  the  second  is  perhaps  the  strongest, 
for  the  fact  that  the  Deity  is  such  a  conscious  and  personal 
existence  as  can  hold  communication  with  reasoning  minds. 
The  first  goes  to  establish  monotheism ;  the  second  sends  a 
death-stab  to  the  heart  of  pantheism. 

We  find  ourselves  led,  then,  by  the  path  trodden  by  Mr. 
Carlyle,  to  the  throne  where  God  sits,  King  of  the  universe. 
iVe  shall  endeavor  to  eliminate  a  theory  of  law  in  consistence 
cvith  this  great  truth.  If  the  hero  is  to  be  worshiped  as  a 
god,  the  scoundrel  is  to  be  hated  as  a  devil ;  the  revenge 
theory  may  then  be  defended :  but  the  fact  may  be  different, 
if  there  never  was  any  such  thing  as  strict  worship  of 
heroes — if  hero  and  scoundrel  are  the  subjects  of  one  living 
God. 

We  desire  to  make  no  show  of  metaphysics  here :  we  write 
with  a  practical  purpose,  and  in  a  popular  form ;  and,  there- 
fore rest  all  on  an  appeal  to  men  as  they  are  represented  in 
history,  and  as  they  feel  in  their  hearts.  But  there  is  one  ar- 
gument of  perhaps  a  somewhat  metaphysical  nature,  which  is 
extremely  simple,  and  seems  to  bear  very  strongly  against 
the  theory  of  revenge ;  it  we  adduce  in  the  outset  It  pro- 
ceeds on  the  hypothesis  that  there  is  an  intelligent  and  al- 
mighty Governor  of  the  universe.  We  introduce  it  by  a 
well-known  quotation : — 

"Alas!  alas! 
Why,  all  the  souls  that  were,  were  forfeit  once  j 
And  He  that  might  the  vantage  best  have  took 
Found  cut  the  remedy :  How  would  you  be, 
If  He,  which  is  the  top  of  judgment,  should 
But  judge  you  as  you  are?     0,  think  on  that; 
And  mercy  then  will  breathe  within  your  lips, 
Like  man  new  made." 


80  FIRST    PRINCIPLES. 

We  can  not  consider  this  a  mere  echo  of  popular  sentiment 
on  the  part  of  Shakspeare :  we  suspect  these  words  came  from 
depths  in  the  greatest  merely  human  heart  that  ever  beat ;  we 
think  we  see  in  them  one  of  those  thoughts  that  pierce  farthest 
into  eternity.    When  thinking  or  speaking  of  the  Infinite  Being, 
we  can  not  proceed  by  calculation  of  degrees :  absolute  purity 
is  stained  by  a  mote  as  certainly  as  by  a  whole  atmosphere  of 
hell's  darkness.     If  it  is  the  eternal  law  of  justice  that  the  rea- 
sonable being  affected  with  sin  be  hated,  we  can  not  go  about 
to  say,  so  much  will  be  hated,  so  much  will  be  tolerated,  and 
so  on.     Now,  Mr.  Carlyle  will  certainly  not  deny  that  sin  ad- 
heres to  the  whole  human  race :  set  on  a  ground  of  perfect 
light,  he  will  allow  our  species,  as  a  whole,  to  look  black.    He 
sees  a  brother  man  commit  some  atrocious  crime :  with  what 
he  calls  a  glow  of  divine  wrath,  he  slays  him.     It  being  a 
divine  emotion  to  hate  that  being  because  affected  with  sin,  it 
must  be  also  divine,  in  one  of  absolute  holiness,  to  hate  and 
exterminate  every  creature  so  affected,  even  by  the  smallest 
speck  that  infinite  light  can  reveal.    If  this  is  so,  how  is  it  that 
the  human  race  exists  ?     How  is  it  that  God  did  not  lift  His 
foot  in  anger,  and  crush  our  planet  into  annihilation  as  a  loath- 
some worm  staining  the  azure  of  immensity  1     Eeally  there 
is  no  answer :  if  hatred  is  the  highest  and  holiest  emotion  with 
which  a  man  can  regard  a  fellow-creature  affected  with  sin,  if 
this  fact  is  the  real  foundation  of  justice,  and  if  an  infraction 
of  justice  here  is  an  infraction  of  essential  right,  there  can  not 
be  conceived  a  reason,  we  might  say  a  possibility,  that  a  sinful 
species  could  subsist  in  God's  world.     And  is  there  a  living 
man,  or  has  there  ever  been  a  man,  who  could  deliberately 
consider  that  his  distance  from  the  purity  of  the  Infinitely  Holy 
^as  less  than  the  distance  of  his  most  sinful  brother  from  him  1 
Is  there  any  of  the  sons  of  men  who  could  deliberately  chal- 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  81 

lenge  hU  ISfakcr  to  cast  a  stone  at  him  1  If  such  there  bo,  let 
him  hold  to  the  theory  that  hatred  and  revenge  are  the  emo- 
tions with  which  God  regards  the  sinner  ;  if  there  is  none  such, 
that  theory  chains  the  noblest  human  soul  that  ever  existed  on 
thf'  eternal  rock  of  despair. 

This  preliminary  consideration  leads  us  to  a  distinction 
which  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  that  is  to  follow — that,  namely, 
between  moral  evil  and  the  soul  it  pollutes.  This  distinction 
Mr.  Carlyle  overlooks  or  ignores,  yet  on  it  all  depends.  God, 
we  most  certainly  hold,  does  eternally  and  infinitely  hate  sin, 
and  no  bounds  are  to  be  placed  to  the  hatred  with  which  it  is 
right  for  men  to  regard  it ;  but  precisely  as  "  hero-worship" 
was  found  not  to  indicate  infinite  love  and  honor  as  due  to 
men,  but  as  directed  toward  the  fountain  of  light,  so  the  efforts 
men  have  made  to  exterminate  the  excessively  wicked  from 
among  them,  indicate  hatred  of  their  brethren  only  in  a  sec- 
ondary and  temporary  sense,  and  point  chiefly  to  the  abyss  of 
blackness  which  their  iniquity  reveals.  The  whole  moral  uni- 
verse seems  to  us  to  be  whelmed  in  a  confusion  as  of  return- 
ing chaos,  if  this  distinction  is  not  rigidly  adhered  to. 

We  can  not  be  required  to  prove  the  possibility  of  drawing 
this  great  distinction,  or  its  reality  when  drawn;  and,  con- 
vinced that  w^e  can  appeal  to  the  instincts  of  men,  we  inten- 
tionally fortify  it  by  no  metaphysical  arguments.  Every  man 
could  understand  and  sympathize  with  Coleridge,  when  he  said 
he  would  tolerate  men,  but  for  principles  he  would  have  no 
toleration.  The  present  Christian  sees  no  mystery  in  that 
passage  where  God  is  asserted  to  have  no  pleasure  in  the  death 
of  the  sinner,  although  the  whole  Bible  testifies  His  exter- 
minating abhorrence  of  sin.  And  have  not  men  ever  borne  • 
witness  to  an  instinctive  feeling  of  this  distinction  ?  Bad  as 
the  world  is,  there  perhaps  was  never  a  scaffold  erected,  and  a 
4* 


82  FIRSTPRINCIPLES. 

man  put  :o  death  upon  it,  for  whom,  whatever  his  crime,  cer- 
tain eyes  in  the  crowd  were  not  filled  with  the  dew  of  pity. 
Have  not  some  nations  treated  the  condemned,  previously  to 
their  execution,  with  condoling  kindness  1  Or  what  find  we  in 
that  spectacle  exhibited  in  Paris,  on  the  autumn  evening  in 
1792,  which  Mr.  Carlyle  has  painted  for  us  as  with  the  brush 
of  Michael  Angelo'?  The  Septembriseurs,  maddened  with 
rage,  their  arms  to  the  elbow  clotted  with  gore,  their  whole 
aspect  that  of  unchained  demons,  clasped  to  their  breasts,  with 
the  audible  weeping  of  irrepressible  joy,  any  one  among  the 
prisoners  who  was  pronounced  guiltless  and  snatched  from  the 
jaws  of  death.  Even  they  witnessed  to  the  fact  that  it  is  a 
stern  work  for  man  to  be  the  executioner  of  man.  It  is  the 
mark  of  the  evil  one  perceived  on  a  fellow-creature  that  is 
hated,  not  that  creature  himself  Would  to  God,  men  say 
from  their  inmost  hearts,  we  could  part  this  evil  from  you ; 
but  we  can  not,  and  we  must  expel  it  from  the  midst  of  us ; 
you  must  go  with  it.  The  tainted  spot  must  be  cut  out ;  but 
while  the  knife  is  being  whetted,  the  tear  is  being  shed.  Mr. 
Carlyle  acknowledges  this  general  fact,  but,  if  well  pondered, 
we  think  it  goes  far  to  invalidate  his  theory.  To  account  for 
it,  without  recognizing  the  distinction  we  have  stated,  will  be 
found  difficult.  The  indulgence  of  every  desire  and  propen- 
sity is,  by  a  recognized  psychological  law,  associated  with  a 
pleasurable  sensation.  When  a  man  kills  another  in  the  fury 
of  revenge,  he  assuredly  experiences  a  momentary  relief  and 
gratification.  By  our  distinction,  all  becomes  consistent ;  the 
passion  is  left  in  the  enjoyment  of  its  own  pleasure ;  the  pain 
arises  from  another  source  yet  to  be  seen. 

Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  we  allege  that  revenge  performs 
no  function  in  human  affairs ;  we  do  believe  it  to  have  a  func- 
tion.    This  we  shall  presently  endeavor  to  indicate ;  but  we 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  83 

now  concede  that,  even  in  the  precise  mode  in  which  Mr.  Car- 
lyle  pictures  its  exercise,  it  may,  in  rare  cases,  come  legiti- 
mately into  action. 

"The  forked  ■weapon  of  the  skies  can  send 
Illumination  into  deep,  dark  holds, 
Which  the  mild  sunbeam  hath  not  power  to  pierce." 

Where  the  calm  voice  of  law  can  not  he  heard,  or  its  hand 
can  not  strike,  then  revenge  may  start  forth  to  assert  humanity 
and  justice. 

Keeping  steadily  in  view  the  distinction  between  the  sinner 
and  his  sin,  we  proceed  to  exhibit  briefly  what  we  deem  the 
real  origin  and  function  of  human  law. 

We  find  man,  in  all  ages  and  circumstances,  present  two 
great  aspects :  that  of  the  individual ;  and  that  of  the  civis, 
or  member  of  society.  We  must  say  one  or  two  words  of 
each. 

It  is  not  a  mere  theological  dogma  that  man  is  king  of  this 
lower  world — that  his  relation  to  his  fellows  is  different  from 
that  he  bears  to  the  inferior  animals.  Is  there  not  a  certain 
mystical  sacredness  attaching  to  the  life  of  a  man  ?  Is  there 
any  degree  of  idiocy  or  insanity  which  will  turn  aside  that 
flaming  sword  with  which  conscience  pursues  the  murderer  ? 
In  the  remotest  desert,  in  the  depth  of  the  sequestered  wood, 
why  is  it  that  he  who  deliberately  slays  his  fellow  feels  that 
he  is  not  unseen  ? — that,  though  no  human  power  will  ever 
'each  him,  there  is  a  tribunal  before  which  he  will  appear — 
One  to  whom  his  brother's  blood  can  cry  even  from  the 
ground  1  Is  it  not  because  there  is  a  sense  in  which  all  men 
are  equal — their  differences  relative,  their  equality  essential  1 
And  what  but  this  can  we  understand  by  the  inherent  majesty 
imputed  by  sages  and  poets  to  men  ?     What  but  this  renders 


84  FIRST     PRINCIPLES. 

it  a  glorious  thing,  however  slender  my  capacities,  that  I  have 
tlie  gift  of  a  human  soul  ?  Not  only  is  it  that  the  grandeurs 
and  harmonies  of  nature  are  disposed  for  the  delight  and  ex- 
altation of  all,  not  only  that 

"  The  sun  is  fix'd, 
And  the  infinite  magnificence  of  Heaven 
Fix'd,  within  reach  of  every  human  eye ; 
The  sleepless  ocean  murmurs  for  all  ears ; 
The  vernal  field  infuses  fresh  delight 
Into  all  hearts :" 

from  which  sublime  tinith  a  metaphysical  as  well  as  a  poetical 
argument  for  essential  human  brotherhood  might  perhaps  be 
drawn :  the  very  fact  that  the  human  eye  has  been  opened,  as 
no  other  being's  on  earth  has  been,  to  see  the  face  of  the  one 
God,  seems  a  sufficient  proof  that  there  remains  for  man,  from 
every  power  on  earth,  an  ultimate  appeal.  The  destinies  of 
men  are  bounded,  not  by  time,  but  by  eternity ;  the  human 
soul  is  a  denizen,  not  alone  of  earth,  but  of  the  universe : 

"  God's  image,  sister  of  the  seraphim," 

if  indeed  the  seraphim  can  claim  a  glory  equal  to  that  of  the 
soul  of  man,  will  always  assert  a  claim  to  the  citizenship  of 
Heaven,  and  a  power  of  appeal  to  the  judgment  of  God.  The 
right  by  which  any  earthly  power  can  judge  and  punish  man 
must  be  delegated. 

By  turning  thus  for  a  moment  upon  man  the  light  of  eternity, 
we  find  pertaining  to  him  an  essential  equality  ;  we  think,  too, 
we  here  discover  the  source  of  that  inextinguishable  and  resist- 
less passion  for  freedom  which  has  ever  distinguished  him  in 
time. 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  86 

Neither  is  it  merely  a  theological  dogma  that  the  human 
race  is  in  a  state  of  imperfection,  and  of  effort  toward  some 
higher  condition.  It  is  a  historical  fact.  Call  it  what  you  will, 
account  for  it  as  you  may,  the  human  race,  in  its  history  in 
time,  has  been  marked  by  one  grand  characteristic,  unique  in 
this  world.  That  characteristic  is  a  visible  effort  toward  some 
development — a  progress,  or  aim  at  progress.  Our  species  has 
not  the  aspect  of  one  who  has  finished  his  journey,  but  of  one 
still  proceeding  in  it ;  not  of  one  who  has  cultivated  his  field, 
and  can  sit  down  to  enjoy  it,  but  of  one  w'ho  still  sees  it  untilled 
and  encumbered  with  rocks ;  humanity  has  always  shown  a 
brow  darkened  with  care  and  dissatisfaction,  an  eye  fixed  on 
the  distance,  a  staff  in  the  hand.  We  need  not  ask  whither  it 
is  bound  ;  but,  beyond  question,  it  has  ever  been  going ;  never 
could  it  lay  itself  down  to  sleep  ;  never  could  it  build  itself  an 
eternal  city ;  ever  its  most  heroic  aspect  has  been  displayed 
when  it  aroused  itself,  and  set  out  anew  on  its  march.  But  the 
deepest  thinkers  have  recognised  that,  along  with  this  character- 
istic of  progress,  the  human  species  is  distinguished  by  that 
also  of  a  remarkable  and  preeminent  unity.  You  cannot  in- 
dividualise man  so  for  as  to  separate  him  from  his  species ;  in 
•the  wolf  child  of  India,  in  the  maniac  of  solitary  confinement, 
you  see  what  man  is  when  separated  from  man.  In  the  unity  of 
the  species,  or  its  irresistible  tendency  toward  unity,  originated 
society.  Society  arrogated  to  itself  a  power  which  no  indi- 
vidual man  can  claim,  the  power  to  touch  the  human  life ;  this 
power,  we  believe,  was  conferred  on  it  by  God,  and  the  form 
in  which  he  revealed  to  man  that  it  belonged  to  him  was,  the 
necessity,  stern  and  painful  indeed,  by  which  he  was  driven  to 
exercise  it. 

The  perfect  development  of  human  unity,  the  attainment  of 
all  that  man  can  do  or  become  in  a  civil  capacity,  is  the  aim  of 


86  FIRSTPRINCIPLES. 

civilization.     The  machinery  of  human  civilization  is  vast  and 
various  ;  one  of  its  principal  parts  is — law. 

Where,  then,  precisely  are  we  to  look  for  the  origin  of  law  1 
Surely  to  the  relation  between  the  two  entities — the  individual, 
and  the  society.  And  if  we  can  find  any  reason  why  the  so- 
ciety should  originate  law,  we  shall  probably  have  discovered 
that  of  wdiich  we  are  in  quest.  We  have  not  far  to  look ;  we 
find  it  by  a  glance  at  individual  passion.  At  what  time  law 
commenced  we  inquire  not — whether  its  origin  was  in  any  re- 
spect supernatural  or  not,  is  of  no  moment  at  present ;  but 
certainly  it  was  when  human  passions  were  seen  tearing  the 
weak  and  defenseless,  when  individual  greed,  individual  lust, 
individual  hate,  and,  most  cruel  and  perilous  of  all,  individual 
jevenge,  ranged  like  beasts  of  the  forest  amid  a  flock,  that  Law 
unbared  her  "  beautiful  bold  brow,"  and  bade  them  all  cower 
beneath  the  eye  of  reason.  Human  law  arose  from  no  human 
passion,  but  from  the  necessity  discerned  by  men,  if  they  were 
to  abide  longer  in  this  world,  to  have  some  voice  above  human 
passion,  with  power  to  control  it. 

That  mighty  instinct  in  the  human  heart  which  has  ever 
spurned  control  by  an  individual  brother,  required  absolutely 
to  be  commanded  by  a  power  not  individual,  which  could  dare 
to  compel  submission.  In  the  very  idea  of  law  we  find  the  re- 
straint of  the  individual :  the  very  object  of  law  is  the  counter- 
action of  passion  ;  if  any  two  ideas  are  precisely  antithetic, 
they  are  these  two,  law  and  passion. 

Let  us,  leaving  the  others,  look  for  a  moment  at  this  particu- 
lar passion  of  revenge.  We  put  these  questions  regarding  it, — 
When  was  it  ever  felt,  save  for  personal  wrongs,  to  such  an  ex- 
tent that  it  could  supply  the  place  of  an  independent,  disin- 
terested voice  1  When  was  it  felt  for  sin,  either  against  God 
or  man,  with  half  the  intensity  with  which  it  has  burned  for 


FIRST    PRINCIPLES.  St 

the  most  insignificant  personal  injury  ?  When  was  its  power 
ever  permitted  to  remain  comparatively  unchecked  without 
producing  effects  of  excess  which  were  the  mockery  of  justice*? 
Revenge  was  in  the  eye  of  Cain  when  he  struck  down  Abel ; 
revenge  was  the  Themis  of  the  deadly  feud  demanding  the  un- 
intermittent  stream  of  blood  from  generation  to  generation  for 
the  accident  or  the  mistake ;  but  when  revenge  ever  spoke,  save 
perhaps  in  the  convulsions  and  spasms  of  national  life,  with  the 
voice  of  reason,  we  know  not.  Of  all  the  passions  upon  which 
Law  cast  her  quelling  eye,  blind,  selfish,  murderous  revenge 
was  perhaps  the  most  turbulent  and  unreasonable. 

We  are  led  to  this  conclusion : — That  man,  feeling  in  his 
bosom  a  freedom  which,  like  the  very  breath  of  the  Almighty, 
seemed  part  of  his  essential  existence,  yet  saw  himself  so  en- 
cumbered by  manifold  imperfections,  so  preyed  upon  by  indi' 
vidual  passions,  that,  in  his  progress  onward,  he  was  compelled, 
unconsciously  or  by  a  voice  from  heaven,  to  originate  the  thing 
society,  and  to  establish  a  power  which,  personating  the  com- 
munity, should  visit  with  punishment  crimes  committed  against 
it :  this  last  power  was  law.  We  have  said  that  it  had  its 
root  in  expediency  ;  but  the  sense  in  which  this  holds  good  is 
important.  It  was  expedient  with  reference  to  eternity  :  as 
mankind  navigated  the  stream  of  time,  a  fatal  mutiny  broke 
out,  and  the  expedient  of  iaw  became  necessary  to  make  exist- 
ence possible ;  in  a  perfect  state  of  humanity  it  were  impos- 
sible; it  will  vanish  when  society  vanishes,  in  the  restored 
state  of  man.  But  it  may,  nevertheless,  appeal  to  eternal  laws ; 
nay,  it  may  be  specially  said  to  rise  over  the  clamor  of  indi- 
vidual and  temporal  interests,  and  endeavor  to  catch  the  eter- 
nal accents  of  justice ;  its  commission  is  temporal,  its  code  may 
be  eternal. 

Law  is  the  antithesis  of  individualism.     But,  if  we  did  seek 


88  FIRST    PRINCIPLES. 

its  analogue  in  the  individual  mind,  we  should  not  look  for  it 
in  revenge :  we  should  find  it  in  the  serene  pause  of  reason, 
when  all  noises  from  without  are  excluded,  and  the  raving  pas- 
sions are  stilled  within,  and  the  soul  asks  counsel  of  pure  truth 
and  perfect  justice. 

Does  not  the  universal  opinion  of  mankind,  in  its  uncon- 
scious expression,  during  all  ages,  support  us  in  our  view  of 
law  ?  If  not,  whence  is  it  that  Justice  has  ever  been  figured  as 
of  calm,  passionless  countenance;  no  cloud  of  revenge,  no 
gleam  of  pity  on  her  brow,  and  holding  in  her  hand  the  well- 
poised  balance  ?  Law  does  not  regard  men  as  such ;  it  regards 
them  as  retarding  forces  which  hinder  men  in  their  march 
through  time,  and,  as  such,  visits  them  with  punishment. 
Hatred,  love,  revenge,  pity,  every  emotion  which  has  reference 
to  the  living,  sentient  being,  is  foreign  to  that  iron  brow ;  there 
must  be  no  quivering  in  the  hand  which  holds  that  even 
balance. 

The  foregoing  proof  was  necessary  to  enable  us  to  exhibit 
the  soundness  of  philanthropy,  as  brought  forward  into  more 
prominent  operation  among  the  agencies  of  human  civilization, 
than  it  had  hitherto  been,  by  John  Howard. 

Look  again  at  that  calm  image  of  Justice,  lifting  her  serene 
brow  into  the  still  azure.  We  think  that,  with  strict  philo- 
sophic truth,  a  poetic  eye,  regarding  that  figure  in  time,  may 
have  seen  that  it  has  ever  been  accompanied  by  two  other 
figures.  On  the  one  hand  was  Revenge,  with  instruments  of 
torture,  and  an  eye  where  blended  the  fury  of  hell  and  th 
hunger  of  the  grave.  She  has  ever  called  for  more  victim 
and  more  pain.  That  she  has  not  cried  in  vain,  let  the  groans 
that  have  come  from  earth's  racks  and  wheels,  earth's  crosses 
and  furnaces,  bear  sad  witness.  On  the  other  hand  was  Love, 
pleading  ever  against  Revenge,  and  endeavoring  to  draw  an 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  89 

iron  tear  from  the  eye  of  Justice.  Both  these  figures  are  for- 
eign to  the  idea  of  la^y.  Revenge  looks  from  the  fliult  to  the 
individual,  and  says,  torture  and  kill  liim  ;  Love  looks  from  the 
fault  to  the  individual,  and  says,  pity  and  save  him ;  Law  re- 
gards the  fault  alone. 

We  fully  grant  that  revenge  has  thus  a  function  in  time. 
Love  might  conceivably  become  morbid,  might  degenerate 
into  a  weak  sentimentalism,  might  cease  to  accept  the  stern 
necessity  of  not  sparing  the  sin,  whatever  may  be  the  feeling  en- 
tertained for  the  sinner.  And  had  it  not  been  for  the  positive 
pleasure  of  revenge,  perhaps  the  sorrow  entailed  upon  men  in 
the  punishment  of  those  among  them  who  clog  the  wheels  of 
progress,  had  caused  its  having  never  been  proceeded  with :  so 
flir,  in  strict  psychological  truth,  does  Mr.  Carlyle  err,  when 
he  speaks  of  the  exercise  of  revenge  being  painful.  Love  may 
go  farther  than  can  be  allowed  it  in  the  present  condition  of 
the  human  race,  and  then  revenge  may  feel  itself  crushed  and 
unduly  outraged,  and  call  out  for  a  new  fixing  of  that  medium 
between  extremes,  which  is  all  we  can  yet  attempt.  Nay,  it 
is  quite  beyond  our  attention  to  deny  that  this  may,  in  indi- 
zidual  instances,  have  been  the  case  in  the  philanthropic  move- 
nent. 

Love  and  revenge,  considered  thus  in  their  relation  to  jus- 
tice, are  alike  temporal.  When  men  have  re-attained  their 
true,  original,  spiritual  life,  their  work  will  have  been  com- 
pleted ;  Justice  will  then  for  ever  rule,  and  alone ;  but  no  lon- 
ger over  cowering,  struggling,  trembling  creatures ;  for,  wnen 
we  look  up,  the  iron  brow  shall  have  become  gold,  and  we 
shall  know,  by  the  fadeless  smile  on  the  lip,  that  to  eternity 
Justice  and  Love  are  one. 

Now  are  we  fairly  at  the  point  where  we  can  decide  upon 
the  claims  of  philanthropy.     Granting  that  love  and  revenge 


90  FIRSTPRINCIPLES. 

are  each  aB.i  equally  foreign  to  the  idea  of  law,  we  ask  this 
question : — In  a  state  of  progress,  in  a  state  of  advancement 
from  worse  to  better,  shall  we  proceed  toward  the  enlargement 
of  the  province  of  love,  or  to  that  of  the  province  of  revenge  1 
Surely  we  may  answer,  without  hesitation,  that  the  advance- 
ment must  be  in  the  direction  of  love,  and  that,  more  and 
more,  revenge  will  be  driven  away,  as  men  attain  to  higher 
and  higher  development.     When  all  passions  fade  away,  their 
function  being  performed,  love  will  also  pass  away,  but  only  to 
become  one  with  justice.     We  shall  not  hang  such  a  curtain 
of  murky  darkness  over  the  future  of  humanity,  as  to  say  that 
it  is  not  toward  love,  but  toward  hatred,  not  toward  mercy, 
but  revenge,  that  we  are  advancing.     Surely,  if  there  is  one 
instinct  in  the  human  heart  which  is  entwined  with  its  essential 
life,  and  which  wings  its  proudest  aspirations ;  if  there  is  one 
universal  faith  written  in  the  brightness  which,  even  in  its 
tears,  the  eye  of  humanity  gathers  as  it  looks  toward  the  far 
distance;   if  there  is  one  belief  which  preeminently  stamps 
earth  as  the  place  of  hope,  it  is  this — that,  despite  volcanoes 
and  thunder-storms,  despite  scaffolds  and  battle-fields,  despite 
death  and  the  grave,  love  is,  by  eternal  nature  and  essence, 
holier  than  hate,  and  will  ultimately  prevail  against  it.    What- 
ever their  present  mission,  revenge  and  hatred  are  known  by 
men  to  belong  to  a  state  of  disease,  to  be  in  their  nature,  when 
between  reasonable  beings,  not  divine,  but  diabolic.     Go  to 
the  poor  Bedouin  of  the  desert,  and  ask  what  is  his  idea  of 
justice  and  of  law.     There,  amid  his  burning  wastes,  where  he 
clings  on  to  the  skirts  of  civilization,  scarce  able  to  count  on 
his  life  for  an  hour  to  come,  you  find  in  full  development  the 
bare  idea  of  force  as  what  is  to  be  feared,  and  obeyed,  and 
worshiped.     The  foot  that  can  crush  him  like  a  worm  into  the 
sand,  the  eye  that  will  not  relent  for  tears  or  groaning — these 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  91 

ne  honors.  Is  not  this  the  first  rude  idea  of  humanity  1  Must 
we  still  learn  from  the  desert  wanderer  ?  Surely,  at  some  point 
in  the  revolution  of  the  ages,  the  soothing,  softening,  mighty 
influences  of  kindness  were  to  begin  to  make  themselves  more 
distinctly  felt  than  in  the  old  iron  times.  It  is  a  universal 
principle  that,  strength  being  secured,  the  milder  every  gov- 
ernment is,  the  nearer  does  it  approach  to  perfection :  this 
holds  good  in  the  heart,  the  family,  and  the  nation.  And  how- 
ever philanthropy  may  as  yet  struggle  amid  obstruction  and 
obscuration,  we  shall  hail  it  as  a  streak,  coming  beautifully, 
though  as  yet  faintly  and  dubiously,  over  the  mist-wreaths  of 
morning,  of  that  mild  sunlight  whose  power  will  one  day  re- 
place that  of  the  tempest.  The  times,  we  shall  hope,  had  come 
for  philanthropy,  and  Howard  was  sent  to  call  it  into  visible 
form  and  working.  And,  methinks,  even  although  such  a 
dreadful  thing  has  happened  as  that  one  or  two  fewer  strokes 
have  been  inflicted  on  the  writhing  criminal,  than  fierce  re- 
venge, or  even  Bedouin  justice,  might  demand,  it  is  better  to 
have  it  so,  than  that  we  should  go  back  to  the  days  of  racks 
and  wheels,  of  human  beings  distracted  with  sorrow,  and 
guiltless  creatures  dying  of  jail  fever.  But  this  consideration 
is  not  required.  We  calmly  rest  the  cause  of  philanthropy 
on  these  simple  truths :  that  there  is  a  discernible  and  distinct 
office  performed  by  pity  in  our  present  condition,  relating  to 
justice ;  and  that  its  function  must  go  on  expanding  if  men 
advance.  Philanthropy  is  a  weapon  from  heaven's  armory ; 
we  trust  the  time  has  come  when  we  can  use  it ;  if  not,  the 
greater  our  shame,  not  the  worse  the  weapon. 

Extremes  are  always  easy ;  this  is  as  true  as  that  they  are 
always  wrong.  A  maudlin,  morbid  pity,  refusing  the  impera- 
tive conditions  of  our  existence  in  time,  is  the  one  extreme ; 
for  it  we   offer  no   defense — it   we   deem   perfectly  distinct 


92  FIRST    PRINCIPLES, 

from  true  Christian  philanthropy :  a  savage,  unsparing,  exe- 
crathig  denunciation  of  philanthropy  seems  to  us  the  other — 
an  equally  false,  and  still  more  easy  extreme ;  against  it  we 
here  specially  strive.  The  difficulty  assuredly  is,  to  discover 
what  is  really  valuable  in  j)hilanthropy,  to  separate  it  from 
dross,  and  to  shape  it  into  a  tool  for  our  work,  or  a  weapon 
for  our  warfare.  What  little  we  have  to  propose  for  the  ac- 
complishment of  this,  we  shall  declare  hereafter.  For  the 
present,  since  it  is  of  the  idea  of  philanthropy  and  not  of  its 
developments  we  treat,  we  shall  conclude  with  a  word  or  two 
relating  to  the  essential  connection  of  the  philanthropy  we 
prize  with  Christianity,  and  what  it  gains  from  this  connec- 
tion. 

We  have  hitherto  spoken  of  love  in  its  human  aspect,  and 
appealed  merely  to  human  reason  and  history.  But  it  can  in 
no  quarter  be  deemed  unimportant  that  an  idea  is  approved 
by  a  religion,  which,  name  it  as  you  will,  is  the  highest  that 
ever  appeared  on  earth,  and  has  swayed  more  intellect  than 
ever  any  other.  Christianity  sanctions  and  embodies  philan- 
thropy. The  angel  that  led  the  choir  over  the  fields  of  Beth- 
lehem was  named  Love.  Take  away  love  from  Christianity, 
and  you  have  taken  away  its  life  :  love,  not  alone  to  the  just 
and  the  holy,  but  to  the  sinner ;  to  the  pale  Magdalene,  to 
whom  no  one  but  the  King  of  men  and  of  angels  will  deign  to 
speak,  to  the  poor  publican,  and  the  hated  leper,  and  the  raving 
maniac.  It  was  at  the  voice  of  Christianity  that  modern  phi- 
lanthropy awoke,  and  it  is  in  this  alliance  that  we  regard  it 
with  hope.  Christianity  gives  us  those  fundamental  truths  of 
philanthropy,  that  sin  can  be  hated  and  the  sinner  loved,  and 
that  love  will  be  the  end  of  all.  Say  not  that  this  first  is  a 
filmy  distinction,  or  that  it  will  blunt  the  weapons  and  unnerve 
the  arms  that  must  in  time  carry  on  truceless  war  with  evil. 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  93 

If  it  is  a  cloud,  it  is  as  one  of  those  interposed  by  kind  super- 
nal powers  between  the  breast  of  Greek  or  Trojan  hero  and 
the  mortal  stab :  it  alone  shuts  our  hearts  against  hatred  of 
our  brothers.  And  think  not  the  second  charge  valid:  all 
human  history  is  against  you.  Men  have  always  fought  and 
toiled  best  when  moved  by  impulses  holding  of  the  infinite. 
It  is  the  banner  painted  on  the  clouds  under  which  men  will 
conquer ;  it  was  when,  amid  the  battle-dust  around  Antioch,  or 
coming  along  the  slopes  of  Olivet,  the  worn  crusader  caught 
the  gleam  of  celestial  helms  advancing  to  his  rescue,  that  he 
became  irresistible.  The  ill  done  us  by  a  poor  brother  is  a 
paltry  motive :  who  would  not  rather  strain  his  sinews  a  little 
harder,  have  a  few  more  hot  drops  on  his  own  brow,  than  kill 
the  poor  creature  whom  we  had  got  down  !  "We  must  have  a 
motive,  in  our  war  with  evil,  that  will  be  beyond  the  sounding 
and  measuring  of  our  own  faculties.  This  Mr.  Carlyle  knows 
well ;  but  he  finds  it  in  boundless  ^vl'ath  against  the  individual 
caitiff;  we,  by  looking  beyond  time  altogether,  in  a  necessity 
of  nature,  and  the  command  of  God.  Sin  is  an  infinite  evil ; 
against  it  we  can  strive  with  unbounded  indignation.  To  put 
it  away  from  us,  we  must  slay  him  who  is  fatally  infected,  and 
whose  infection  will  spread  :  but  not  toward  him  are  we  neces- 
sitated to  entertain  any  feeling  but  love ;  the  whole  fervor  of 
our  hate  is  against  that  snake  whose  deadly  venom  has  utterly 
tainted  his  blood.  It  is  by  some  mighty  distraction  in  the 
order  of  things,  by  some  staining  of  the  "  white  radiance  of 
eternity,"  by  some  disturbance  of  the  everlasting  rest,  that 
sin  has  extended  its  influence  to  reasoning  human  beings.  One 
great  effect  of  this  is,  that,  in  time,  and  by  man,  the  distinction 
between  the  sin  and  the  reasoning  human  being  it  affects  can 
not  be  perfectly  preserved.  But  the  infinitude  of  God's  peace 
wiU  one  day  envelop  the  little  stream  of  time,  and  hush  all  its 


94  FIRST     PRINCIPLES. 

frettings  and  foamings  in  the  calm  of  its  perfect  light ;  and  the 
religion  whose  aim  and  end  is  the  attainment  of  this  higher 
rest  by  men,  does  most  fitly  and  with  a  lublime  prominence 
wear  this  distinction  on  its  front.  "  Love  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself,"  says  Christianity :  there  is  no  exception.  But  does 
Christianity  not  bid  us  war  against  sin  ?  We  suppose  it  is 
unnecessary  to  quote  the  whole  Bible. 

Retaining,  with  Sandy  Mackay,  the  ancient  belief  in  a  posit- 
ive living  spirit  of  evil,  we  believe  also  in  sinless  intelligences, 
superior,  for  the  present  at  least,  to  men,  and  employed  on 
bests  of  mercy  by  God.  Wandering  unseen  among  us  in  the 
performance  of  their  ministries  of  love,  they  are  untainted  by 
the  sin,  and  untouched  by  the  sorrow  of  earth.  Now,  we  can 
conceive  no  way  in  which  they  could  have  been  secured  from 
mere  earthly  sorrow,  from  the  poignancy  of  sheer  ignoble 
grief — that  grief  which  is  dependent  for  its  origin  on  the  state, 
and  not  the  circumstances  of  the  soul — save  by  their  distinguish- 
ing between  the  sin  and  the  sinner,  and  being  thus  wrapped  up 
in  an  impenetrable  garment  of  celestial  love.  Safe  in  this,  they 
can  gaze  upon  the  wandering  mortal,  however  black  his  iniquity, 
with  eyes  wherein  every  gleam  of  indignation,  every  dark 
speck  of  hatred,  every  scowl  of  revenge,  is  drowned  in  the 
softest  dew.  God  has  sent  them  as  messengers  to  a  world  of 
sin,  but  they  bear  with  them  the  atmosphere  of  heaven,  for 
within  them  is  the  glow,  around  them  is  the  music,  of  love. 
And  we  affirm  that  man  by  Christianity  is  exalted  to  a  privilege 
ike  theirs.  Like  them,  he  shares  in  the  universal  battle  ;  like 
^hem,  he  wars  to  the  death  with  sin :  but,  if  he  is  a  Christian, 
he  is  like  them  dowered  with  an  exemption  from  every  emo- 
tion that  would  taint  the  atmosphere  of  his  own  mind.  We 
think  we  have  shown  that  all  we  now  say  is  consistent  with 
human  instinct ;  but  if  nature  only  points  to  the  distinction,  ifj 


FIRST     PRINCIPLES.  95 

like  a  dumb  animal,  it  merely  by  its  pain  indicates  a  want, 
Christianity  brings  out  the  truth  in  its  clearness,  and  vindicates 
a  superiority  to  nature.  It  is  on  the  mount  with  Jesus,  that 
we  enter  the  company  of  heavenly  creatures. 

And  with  full  decision,  while  with  earnest  reverence,  would 
we  point  to  Christ  Jesus  himself  as  the  perfect  philanthropist. 
Let  who  will  deny  the  compatibility  of  a  Christian  hatred 
of  sin  with  a  Christian  love  of  the  sinner ;  let  it  appear  to 
philosophers  and  to  natural  religionists  chimerical  or  weak  as 
it  may ;  the  Christian  can  always  respond  by  merely  pointing 
to  Ilim  as  He  appeared  on  that  day  when  He  looked  over 
Jerusalem.  Was  there  infinite  hatred  for  sin  in  those  words 
of  doom  ?  Was  there  infinite  love  in  those  tears  ?  And,  to 
make  an  allusion  to  what  we  have  not  space  to  prove,  let  who 
will  jeer  at  the  man  or  the  woman  who  goes  into  the  penitent- 
iary, the  prison,  the  condemned  cell,  with  the  Bible,  to  try  to 
rescue  for  heaven  those  whom  society  must  banish  from  earth : 
if  nature  calls  that  a  vain  or  absurd  task,  Christianity  speaks 
differently.  To  every  objection — of  hopelessness,  of  senti- 
mentalism,  of  enthusiasm — the  Christian  can  simply  answer, 
There  was  once  a  thief  to  whom  the  gospel  was  preached  in  the 
mortal  agony,  and  that  night  he  walked  with  the  Preacher  in 
Paradise. 


We  proceed  to  mark,  in  the  method  we  have  proposed  to 
ourselves  in  these  pages,  the  emergence  of  Christian  Philan- 
thropy in  our  era :  our  task  takes  the  form  of  biograpy. 


CHAPTER  II. 

HOWARD  ;    AND  THE  RISE  OF  PHILANTHROPY. 

We  feel  ourselves  enabled,  and,  for  that  reason,  bound,  to  ex- 
press a  conviction,  that  there  is  no  fair  and  adequate,  in  one 
word,  satisfactory,  biography  of  Howard  in  the  hands  of  his 
countrymen,  no  estimate  of  his  character  and  work  which  can  or 
ought  to  be  final.     Aiken's  work  is  mainly  a  lengthened  mental 
analysis,  by  no  means  void  of  value,  and  written  with  clearness 
and  spirit ;  but  it  admits  of  doubt  whether  Howard  was  of  that 
order  of  men,  in  whose  case  such  analysis  can  be  considered 
useful  or  admissible.     Brown's  life  contains  a  true  image  of 
Howard,  but  it  rests  there  in  rude  outline,  too  much  as  the 
statue  lies  in  the  half  cut  block  ;  the  work  wants  unity,  is  fatally 
dull,  and  is  not  free  from  the  generic  taints  of  biography,  ex- 
aggeration and  daubing.     Mr.  Dickson's  book  is,  in  some  re- 
spects, the  best ;  and  yet,  in  some  others,  the  worst  we  have 
seen  on  Howard.     Tlie  account  it  gives  of  his  journeys  is 
spirited  and  clear,  and  no  charge  of  dulness  can  be  brought 
against  its  general  style.     Yet  it  may  be  pronounced,  as  a 
whole,  and  in  one  word,  wrong.     It  is  set  on  a  false  key.    It  is 
brisk,  sparkling,  continually  pointed ;  if  it  does  not  directly 
share  the  characteristics  of  either,  it  seems  to  belong  to  a  de- 
batable region  between  flippancy  and  bombast ;  in  fatal  meas- 
ure, it  wants  chasteness  and  repose.     Now,  we  know  of  no  man 


HOWARD;     AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.        97 

in  whose  delineation  these  general  characteristics  are  so  totally 
out  of  place,  and  these  wants  so  plainly  irreparahle,  as  in  that 
of  Howard.  The  great  attribute  of  his  nature,  the  universal 
aspect  of  his  life,  was  calmness :  he  ever  reminds  one  of  a 
solemn  hymn,  sung,  with  no  instrumental  accompaniment,  with 
little  musical  power,  but  with  the  earnest  melody  of  the  heart, 
in  an  old  Hebrew  household.  Mr.  Dickson  gives  his  readers 
a,  wrong  idea  of  the  man :  more  profoundly  wrong  than  could 
have  arisen  from  any  single  mistake  (and  such,  of  a  serious 
nature,  there  are),  for  it  results  from  the  whole  tone  and  man- 
ner of  the  work.  A  Madonna,  in  the  pure  color  and  somewhat 
rigid  grace  of  Francia,  stuck  round  with  gum-flowers  by  a 
Belgian  populace ;  a  Greek  statue  described  by  a  young  Ameri- 
can fine  writer ; — such  are  the  anomalies  suggested  by  this 
life  of  Howard.  Tliere  were  one  or  two  memoirs  published  in 
magazines  at  the  time  of  his  death,  but  these  are  now  quite  un- 
known. On  the  whole  we  must  declare,  that  the  right  estimate 
and  proper  representation  of  the  founder  of  Modern  Philan- 
throjDy  have  still  to  be  looked  for.  And  at  the  present  moment 
such  are  specially  required.  Since  the  publication  of  Mr. 
Carlyle's  pamphlets,  opinion  regarding  him  has  been,  we  think, 
of  one  of  two  sorts  :  either  it  is  thought  that  his  true  place  has 
at  length  been  fixed,  that  Mr.  Carlyle's  sneers  are  reasonable ; 
or  unmeasured  and  undistinguishing  indignation  has  been  felt 
against  that  writer,  and  the  old  rapturous  applause  of  Howard 
has  been  prolonged.  In  neither  view  of  the  case  can  we  rest. 
To  submit  that  applause  to  a  calm  examination,  and  discover 
wherein,  and  how  far,  it  is  and  has  been  just ;  to  estimate  the 
power  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  attack,  and  determine  in  how  far  it 
settles  the  deserts  of  its  subject ;  and  to  offer  a  brief,  yet  es- 
sentially adequate  representation  of  the  life  of  Howard  in  its 
wholeness,  has  been  our  attempt  in  the  following  paragraphs. 

5 


98  HOWARD  ; 

We  are  perfectly  sensible  that  our  effort  has  but  j^artially 
succeeded  ;  we  know  too  well  how  near  to  each  other  are  the 
indispensable  requisite,  true  repose,  and  the  total  failure,  dul- 
ness  :  our  hope  is,  that  we  have  spoken  truth,  and  truth  which 
requires  to  be  spoken. 

John  Howard  was  born  in  London,  or  its  vicinity,  about  the 
vear  1727  ;  the  precise  locality  and  the  precise  date  have  been 
natter  of  dispute.  His  mother,  of  whom  we  have  no  informa- 
tion, died  in  his  infancy.  His  father  was  a  dealer  in  upholstery 
wares  in  London,  and  realized  a  considerable  fortune.  We 
are  somewhat  astonished  to  hear  that  he  had  a  character  for 
parsimony.  We  are  not,  indeed,  furnished  with  any  instances 
of  remarkable  closeness  or  illiberality,  and  his  conduct  to  his 
son  affords  no  marks  of  such.  That  the  allegation,  however, 
had  certain  grounds  in  truth,  we  can  not  doubt ;  and  the  cir- 
cumstance is  not  a  little  singular  in  the  father  of  one,  who  must 
be  allowed,  whether  with  censure  or  applause,  to  have  found, 
from  the  days  of  his  boyhood,  a  keen  delight  in  giving.  But, 
whatever  the  nature  or  force  of  this  foible,  the  character  of  the 
elder  Howard  was,  on  the  whole,  worthy  and  substantial.  He 
was  a  man  of  quiet  methodic  habits,  deeply  imbued  with  re- 
ligious sentiment ;  his  views  were  Calvinistic,  and  he  was  a 
member  of  a  denomination  unconnected  with  the  English  es- 
tablishment— probably  the  Independent.  He  was  specially 
characterized  by  a  rigid  observance  of  the  Sabbath.  We  find  in 
him,  indeed,  unmistakable  traces  of  the  devout  earnestness  of 
an  earlier  age  ;  we  think  that  it  admits  of  little  doubt  that  his 
religion  was  a  lingering  ray  of  the  light  which  burned  so  con- 
spicuously in  England  in  the  preceding  century.  While  the 
bacchanal  rout  of  the  Restoration  made  hideous  the  night  of 
England's  departed  glory,  there  were  a  few,  perhaps  many, 
who  retired  unnoticed  into  hidden  places,  to  nurse,  on  house- 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  99 

hold  altars,  the  flame  which  seemed  erewhile  about  to  illumme 
the  world ;  and  in  the  next  century  such  could  not  have  alto- 
gether died  away.  That  deep  godliness  whose  sacred  influence, 
like  a  resting  gleam  of  soft  dewy  light,  was  shed  over  the  whole 
career  of  John  Howard,  accompanied  him  from  his  father's 
house.  Were  it  not  somewhat  strange,  if  it  proved  to  have 
been  a  dying  ray  of  the  old  Puritanism  which  brightened  into 
Modern  Philanthropy ! 

The  boy  Howard  made  no  figure  in  his  classes.  He  was, 
beyond  question,  what  is  generally  known  as  a  dull  boy.  He 
never  acquired  a  perfect  grammatical  knowledge,  or  a  ready 
command,  even  of  his  native  language.  Yet  he  does  appear, 
in  his  early  years,  to  have  given  indications  of  a  character  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  ordinary  dull  boys.  His  schoolfellows 
seem  to  have  discerned  him,  despite  his  slowness,  to  possess 
qualities  deserving  honorable  regard ;  they  saw  that  he  was 
unobtrusive,  self-respecting,  unostentatiously  but  warmly  gen- 
erous. Price,  doubtless  one  of  the  quickest  of  boys,  and 
Howard,  slow  as  he  was,  were  drawn  toward  each  other  at 
school,  and  formed  a  friendship  broken  only  by  death.  He 
succeeded,  also,  and  with  no  conscious  eflbrt,  in  inspiring  his 
older  friends  and  relatives  with  a  sense  of  the  general  worth, 
the  substantial,  reliable  value,  of  his  character.  He  was  known 
to  be  sedate,  serious,  discreet;  his  word  could  be  depended 
upon,  his  sagacity  was  true ;  above  all,  he  was  simple,  quiet, 
modest. 

It  being  manifest  that  he  had  no  vocation  for  letters,  his  fa- 
ther very  sensibly  removed  him  from  school,  and  bound  him 
apprentice  to  Llessrs.  Newnham  &  Shipley,  grocers  in  the  city 
of  London.  A  premium  of  £700  was  paid  with  him  :  he  was 
furnished  with  separate  apartments,  and  a  couple  of  saddle- 
horses.     We  find  no  mark  of  parsimony  here. 


100  HOWARD  ; 

In  1742,  his  father  died,  leaving  him  heir  to  considerable 
property,  and  seven  thousand  pounds  in  money.  By  the  pro- 
visions of  the  will,  he  was  not  to  enter  on  his  inheritance  ere 
reaching  his  twenty -fourth  year.  But  his  guardians  permitted 
him  at  once  to  undertake  the  principal  management  of  his  af- 
fairs. As  he  was  still  a  mere  boy,  seventeen  or  eighteen  at 
most,  this  must  be  regarded  as  a  decisive  proof  of  the  high  es- 
timation in  which  he  was  held  by  those  who  had  been  in  a 
position  to  form  an  opinion  of  his  character.  He  speedily 
quitted  the  establishment  in  the  city ;  his  apprenticeship  was 
never  completed. 

Not  long  after  his  father's  death,  he  traveled  for  some  time 
on  the  Continent,  and,  on  his  return,  went  into  lodgings  at 
Stoke  Newington.  Here  he  continued  for  several  years.  His 
existence  was  cpiiet,  even,  in  no  way  remarkable,  broken  only 
by  visits  to  the  west  of  England  on  account  of  his  health. 
This  last  was  quite  unsettled.  It  is  indeed  to  be  borne  in  mind, 
in  the  contemplation  of  his  whole  career,  that  he  had  to  sus- 
tain a  life-long  struggle  with  ill-health,  that  all  the  influences, 
to  sour  the  temper,  to  close  the  heart,  to  dim  the  intellect,  to 
enfeeble  the  will,  which  are  included  in  that  one  word,  bore 
perpetually  upon  Howard.  His  constitution  was  by  no  means 
sound,  and  had  a  strong  determination  toward  consumption. 
In  his  unnoticed  retirement  at  Stoke  Newington,  we  can  easily 
picture  him  ;  his  pale,  tranquil  countenance,  marked,  perhaps, 
with  somewhat  of  the  weary  and  oppressed  look  that  comes  of 
constant  acquaintance  with  weakness  and  pain,  but  unclouded 
by  any  repining,  and  mildly  lighted  by  modest  self-respect,  by 
inborn  kindness,  by  deep,  habitual  piety.  He  derived  some 
pleasure  from  a  slight  intermeddling  with  certain  of  the  simplest 
parts  of  natural  philosophy  and  medical  science  :  of  the  latter 
he  seems  to  have  obtained  a  somewhat  considerable  knowledge. 


AND    THE     RISE     OF    PHILANTHROPY.  101 

This  quiet  existence  was,  after  a  time,  rather  interestingly 
and  nuexpectedly  enlivened.  Howard,  in  one  set  of  apart- 
ments which  he  occupied,  met  with  less  attention  than  he 
deemed  his  due ;  probably  it  was  thought  his  mild  nature 
could  be  imposed  upon  with  impunity  :  he  quitted  the  place. 
Entering  lodgings  kept  by  a  widow  named  Loidore,  he  found 
himself  waited  upon  to  his  absolute  satisfaction.  Jn  his  n^w 
abode  illness  overtook  him,  or  rather  his  perpetual  ill-health 
reached  a  crisis.  Mrs.  Loidore  tended  him  with  all  possible 
iindness,  and  the  result  on  his  part  was  not  only  gratitude,  but, 
as  we  believe,  sincere  attachment.  On  his  recovery,  he  offered 
her  his  hand.  She  was  above  fifty ;  he  was  now  about  twenty- 
five.  Her  health,  too,  was  delicate  ;  but  Howard  was  reso- 
lute, and,  after  of  course  objecting,  she  of  course  consented. 
The  circumstance  indicates  Howard's  extreme  simplicity  of 
nature,  and  power  to  do,  in  the  face  of  talk  and  laughter,  what 
he  thought  right  and  desirable  ;  it  may  also  be  regarded  as  one 
proof  among  many  of  a  naturally  affectionate  nature  :  it  reveals 
nothing  further. 

For  two  or  three  years,  the  married  pair  resided  at  Stoke 
Newington,  much  in  the  same  manner,  we  presume,  as  former- 
ly. Howard  had  a  real,  though  by  no  means  ardent  affection 
for  his  wife  ;  it  was  a  sincere  and  even  keen  affliction  he  ex- 
perienced, when,  after  the  above  period,  she  died. 

We  have  glanced  lightly  over  the  youthful  period  of  How- 
ard's life.  We  have  deemed  it  right  to  do  so,  although  there 
are  a  few  incidents  recorded  at  the  period  not  altogether  un- 
important,  their  importance  being  derived  solely  from  the 
light  reflected  on  them  by  his  subsequent  history,  and  their 
own  aspect  being  somewhat  trivial.  The  extent  of  information 
they  afford  us  regarding  him  may  be  summed  up  by  saying, 
that  they  show  him  to  have  been  methodic,  gentle,  and,  above 


102  HOWARD  ; 

all,  coKsideratelj  kind.  He  seems  certainly  never  to  have 
allowed  the  pleasure  of  niaking  a  fellow-creature  happier  to 
have  escaped  him. 

He  was  now  about  twenty-eight  years  of  age.  Unbound  by 
any  tie  to  England,  he  determined  again  to  travel.  The  ex- 
citement arising  from  the  occurrence  of  the  great  earthquake 
at  Lisbon  was  still  fresh,  and  he  was  attracted  to  Portugal 
He  sailed  for  Lisbon,  in  a  vessel  called  the  Hanover.  Hi. 
voyage,  however,  was  not  destined  to  have  a  peaceable  termi- 
nation ;  and  the  circumstances  into  which  he  was  about  to  be 
thrown,  exercised  a  perceptible  influence  on  his  future  career. 
The  ship  was  taken  by  a  French  privateer ;  Howard  was  made 
prisoner.  The  treatment  he  met  with  was  inhuman.  For 
forty  hours  he  was  kept  with  the  other  prisoners  on  board  the 
French  vessel,  without  water,  and  with  "  hardly  a  morsel  of 
food."  They  were  then  carried  into  Brest,  and  committed  to 
the  castle.  They  were  flung  into  a  dungeon ;  and,  after  a  fur- 
ther period  of  starvation,  "  a  joint  of  mutton  was  at  length 
thrown  into  the  midst  of  them,  which,  for  want  of  the  accom- 
modation of  so  much  as  a  solitary  knife,  they  were  obliged  to 
tear  to  pieces,  and  gnaw  like  dogs."  There  was  nothing  in  the 
dungeon  to  sleep  on  except  some  straw,  and  in  such  a  place, 
and  with  such  treatment,  Howard  and  his  fellow-prisoners  re- 
mained for  nearly  a  week.  He  was  then  removed  to  Carpaix, 
and  afterward  to  Morlaix,  where  he  impressed  his  jailer  with 
such  a  favorable  opinion  of  his  character,  that  he  was  permit- 
ted to  enjoy  an  amount  of  liberty  not  usually  accorded  to  pris- 
oners in  his  situation. 

At  Morlaix,  Howard  had  inducement  and  apology  enough 
for  remaining  idle,  or,  at  least,  for  occupying  himself  solely  in 
negotiations  for  his  own  release,  and  in  gathering  up  his 
strength  after  his  hardships.     But  he  did  not  remain  idle,  nor 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PniLANTHROPY.  103 

did  he  abandon  himself  to  the  above  occupations.  The  suffer- 
ings he  had  witnessed  while  inmate  of  a  French  prison  would 
not  let  him  rest.  He  had  seen  something  amiss,  something 
unjust,  something  which  pained  his  heart  as  a  feeling  man;  his 
English  instinct  of  order  and  of  work  was  outraged;  there 
was  something  to  be  done ;  and  he  set  himself  to  do  it.  He 
collected  information  respecting  the  state  of  English  prisoners 
of  war  in  France.  He  found  that  his  own  treatment  was  part, 
and  nowise  a  remarkable  part,  of  a  system ;  that  many  hun- 
dreds of  these  prisoners  had  perished  through  sheer  ill  usage, 
and  that  thirty-six  had  been  buried  in  a  hole  at  Dman  in  one 
day.  In  fact,  he  discovered  that  he  had  come  upon  an  abomi- 
nation and  iniquity  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  which,  strangely 
enough,  had  been  permitted  to  go  on  unheeded  until  it  had 
reached  this  frightful  excess.  He  learned  its  extent,  and  de- 
parted with  his  information  for  England ;  he  was  permitted  to 
cross  the  Channel,  on  pledging  his  word  to  return,  if  a  French 
officer  was  not  exchanged  for  him.  He  secured  his  own  liber- 
ation, and  at  once  set  to  work  on  behalf  of  his  oppressed 
countrymen.  His  representations  were  effectual :  those  pris- 
oners of  war  who  were  confined  in  the  three  prisons  which 
had  been  the  principal  scene  of  the  mischief,  returned  to  Eng- 
land in  the  first  cartel  ships  that  arrived.  Howard  modestly 
remarks,  that  perhaps  his  sufferings  on  this  occasion  increased 
his  sympathy  with  the  inhabitants  of  prisons.  There  is  not 
much  to  be  said  of  these  simple  and  unimposiug  circumstances. 
They  merely  show  that  he,  on  coming  into  a  position  to  do  a 
piece  of  work,  did  it  at  once,  and  thoroughly ;  that  his  feelings 
were  not  of  the  sentimental  sort,  which  issue  in  tears  or  words, 
but  of  the  silent  sort,  which  issue  in  deeds ;  that  what  had 
doubtless  been  seen  by  many  a  dapper  officer,  and  perhaps  by 
prisoners  not  military,  in  full  health  and  with  ample  leisure, 


104  HOWARD  ; 

had  not  beeB.  righted  until  seen  by  Howard,  sickly  and  slow 
of  speech.  It  was  nothing  great  or  wonderful  that  he  did :  in 
the  circumstances,  nine  out  of  ten  would  have  done  nothing  at 
all.  He  was  thanked  by  the  commissioners  for  the  relief  of 
sick  and  wounded  seamen ;  but  his  real  reward  was  the  intense 
pleasure  with  which  he  must  have  hailed  the  arrival  of  those 
cartel  ships,  and  felt  that  at  least  so  much  iniquity  and  cruelty 
was  ended.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life,  dull  Howard  was  at 
the  top  of  his  class. 

Abandoning,  for  the  present,  all  thoughts  of  foreign  travel, 
Howard  now  retired  to  Bedfordshire,  where  he  possessed  an 
estate.  This  was  situated  at  the  village  of  Cardington,  and 
had  been  the  scene  of  his  childhood ;  it  was  his  principal  resi- 
dence during  life.  We  come  to  contemplate  him  in  what  he 
himself  declared  to  have  been  the  only  period  of  his  life  in 
which  he  enjoyed  real  j)leasure.  Though  quiet  and  unobserved, 
that  pleasure  was  indeed  real,  and  deep. 

He  had  reached  the  prime  of  his  manhood ;  his  years  were 
about  thirty.  His  character,  in  its  main  features,  was  matured. 
He  was  quiet,  circumspect,  considerate ;  he  knew  himself,  and 
was  guarded  by  a  noble  modesty  from  obtruding  into  any 
sphere  for  which  he  was  not  fitted  by  nature ;  the  groundwork 
of  his  character  was  laid  in  method,  kindness,  and  deep,  un- 
questioning godliness.  The  time  had  arrived  when  he  was  to 
experience  a  profound  and  well-placed  affection,  and  to  have  it 
amply  returned.  Henrietta  Leeds  was  the  daughter  of  Ed- 
ward Leeds  of  Ci'oxton  in  Cambridgeshire ;  she  was  about  the 
same  age  with  Howard,  and  seemed  formed  by  nature  pre- 
cisely for  his  wife.  She  resembled  him  in  deep  and  simple 
piety ;  she  had  drawn  up  a  covenant  in  which  she  consigned 
herself,  for  time  and  eternity,  to  her  Father  in  heaven,  and 
signed  it  with  her  own  hand.     She  resembled  him  in  general 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  105 

simplicity  of  nature  :  she  had  no  taste  or  liking  for  aught  be- 
yond what  was  plain  and  neat.  Most  of  all,  she  resembled 
him  in  kindness  of  disposition ;  the  bestowal  of  happiness  was 
the  source  of  her  keenest  joy.  Her  features  were  regular ; 
their  expression  mild,  somewhat  pensive,  and  not  lacking  in- 
telligence :  a  little  gilding  from  love  might  make  her  face  seem 
beautiful.  Where  she  and  Howard  first  met,  w^e  know  not ; 
but  meet  they  did,  and  thought  it  might  be  advisable  to  make 
arrangements  to  obviate  the  necessity  of  future  parting.  His 
love  was  certainly  in  no  sense  rapturous.  It  v^as  sincere  and 
deep,  but  characteristic ;  it  retained,  at  a  period  when  such  is 
usually  dispensed  with,  the  noble  human  faculty  of  looking  be- 
fore and  after.  Love  has  a  thousand  modes  and  forms,  all  of 
which  may  be  consistent  with  reality  and  truth.  It  may  come 
like  the  burst  of  morning  light,  kindling  the  whole  soul  into 
new  life  and  radiance ;  it  may  grow,  inaudibly  and  unknown, 
until  its  roots  are  found  to  be  through  and  through  the  heart, 
entwined  with  its  every  fiber ;  it  is  unreal  and  false  only  when 
it  is  a  name  for  some  form  of  selfishness.  Howard's  was 
a  quiet,  earnest,  undemonstrative  love.  He  was  drawn  by  a 
thousand  sympathies  to  Harriet ;  never  did  nature  say  more 
clearly  to  man  that  here  was  the  one  who  had  been  created  to 
be  his  helpmate ;  he  heard  nature's  voice,  and  loved.  But  he 
was  quite  calm.  He  even  looked  over  the  wall  of  the  future 
into  the  paradise  which  he  was  to  enter,  and  remarked  the 
possibility  of  difference  arising  between  the  happy  pair  whom 
he  saw  walking  in  the  distance.  Accordingly,  he  went  to  Har 
riet,  and  proposed  a  stipulation,  that,  in  case  of  diversity  of 
opinion,  his  voice  should  be  decisive.  Harriet  assented.  They 
were  married  in  1758,  and  took  up  their  residence  at  Cai  ding- 
ton.  Here,  wdth  the  exception  of  a  few  years  spent  at  a  small 
5* 


106  HOWARD  ; 

property  which  Howard  purchased  in  Hampshire,  they  contin- 
ued until  the  death  of  Mrs.  Howard. 

We  can  not  hut  linger  for  a  brief  space  on  the  one  pleasant 
spot  in  Howard's  earthly  journey.  Ere  he  met  Harriet,  he 
had  turned  to  the  right  hand  and  to  the  left,  scarce  knowing  or 
caring  whither  he  went,  and  dogged  always  by  pain.  Not 
long  after  her  death,  he  heard  the  call  which  made  him  a  name 
forever,  and  which  bade  him  leave  the  wells  and  the  palm- 
trees  of  rest,  to  take  his  road  along  the  burning  sand  of  duty. 
Not  only  may  the  spectacle  of  a  truly  happy  English  home  be 
pleasing,  but  we  may  gather  from  the  prospect  certain  hints 
touching  the  actual  nature  and  precise  value  of  Howard's 
character. 

The  pleasures  of  the  new  pair  were  somewhat  varied.  The 
embellishment  of  the  house  and  grounds  went  so  far.  This 
was  a  business  of  particular  interest  with  Howard.  He  built 
additions  to  his  house,  and  laid  out  three  acres  in  pleasure- 
grounds,  erecting  an  arbor,  and  cutting  and  planting  according 
to  his  simple  taste ;  the  approving  smile  of  Harriet  always 
sped  the  work.  A  visit  to  London,  too,  was  proposed  and 
effected;  but  the  enjoyment  obtained  was  nowise  great,  for 
neither  was  adapted  for  town  life,  and  Harriet  in  particular 
longed  for  the  green  fields.  Natural  philosophy,  in  a  very 
small  way,  was  put  under  contribution.  Then,  there  was  oc- 
casional visiting  and  entertaining  of  the  country  gentlemen  of 
Bedfordshire.  Howard  always  exercised  a  warm  and  dignified 
hospitality,  and  though  remarkably  abstemious  himself,  kept 
ever  a  good  table  and  excellent  wines  for  his  guests.  But  of 
all  the  joys  of  this  Bedfordshire  home,  by  far  the  principal 
arose  out  of  the  fact  that  Howard  and  his  wife  were  both  "  by 
nature  admirers  of  happy  human  faces."  Around  Cardington, 
there  was  soon  drawn  a  circle  of  such ;  gradually  widening, 


AND    THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  107 

still  brightening,  and,  by  nature's  happy  law,  ever  shedding  a 
stronger  radiance  of  reflected  joy  on  the  center  whence  their 
own  gladness  came.  Shortly  after  the  marriage,  we  find  Har- 
riet disposing  of  certain  jewels,  and  putting  the  price  into  what 
they  called  the  charity-purse ;  its  contents  went  to  procure  this 
crowning  luxury,  happy  human  faces.  Since  this  pleasure  in- 
erests  us  more  than  any  of  the  others,  we  must  inquire  how 
the  money  was  disposed  of. 

The  village  of  Cardington  had  been  the  abode  of  poverty 
and  vrretchedness.  Its  situation  was  low  and  marshy ;  the  in- 
habitants were  unhealthy ;  ague,  that  haunts  the  fen  and  cow- 
ers under  the  mantle  of  the  mist,  especially  abounded.  Alto- 
gether, this  little  English  village  had  the  discontented,  uneasy 
look  of  a  sick  child.  And  the  intellectual  state  of  its  people 
corresponded  to  their  physical ;  no  effort,  so  far  as  we  learn, 
had  been  made  to  impart  to  them  aught  of  instruction.  Part 
of  this  village  was  on  the  estate  of  John  Howard.  Unnoticed 
by  any,  and  not  deeming  himself  noteworthy,  but  having  in 
his  bosom  a  true,  kind  heart,  and  loyally  anxious  to  approve 
himself  to  his  God,  he  came  to  reside  upon  it  with  his  wife. 
No  bright  talents  were  his,  and  his  partner  was  a  simple  crea- 
ture, of  mild  womanly  ways,  made  to  love  rather  than  to  think. 
Yet  the  fact  was,  account  for  it  as  you  will,  that,  year  by  year, 
the  village  of  Cardington  showed  a  brighter  face  to  the  morn- 
ing sun ;  year  by  year,  the  number  of  damp,  unwholesome 
cottages  grew  less ;  year  by  year,  you  might  see  new  and  dit- 
erent  cottages  spring  up,  little  kitchen-gardens  behind,  little 
lower-gardens  before,  neat  palings  fronting  the  road,  roses  and 
creepers  looking  in  at  the  windows,  well- washed,  strong-lunged, 
sunny-faced  children  frolicking  round  the  doors.  These  cot- 
tages were  so  placed  that  they  could  see  the  sunlight ;  the  mist 
and  the  ague  were  driven  back.     Their  inhabitants  paid  an 


108  "  HOWARD  ; 

easy  rent,  sent  their  children  to  school,  were  a  contented^ 
orderly,  sober  people.  Cardington  became  "  one  of  the  neatest 
villages  in  the  kingdom."  If  you  asked  one  of  the  villagers 
to  what  or  whom  it  owed  all  this,  the  answer  would  have 
been — John  Howard. 

Kind-hearted,  conscientious,  shrewd,  and  accurate,  he  had 
lost  no  time  in  acquainting  himself  with  the  evils  with  which 
he  had  to  contend,  and  addressing  himself  to  the  contest.  The 
damp,  unhealthy  cottages  on  his  own  estate  were  by  degrees 
removed,  and  such  as  we  have  described  built  in  their  stead ; 
those  not  on  his  own  estate,  requiring  a  similar  treatment,  were 
purchased.  He  let  the  new  cottages  at  an  advantageous  rate, 
annexing  certain  conditions  to  their  occupancy.  He  became 
the  center  of  quite  a  patriarchal  system.  His  tenants  were,  to 
a  certain  extent,  under  his  authority ;  they  were  removable  at 
will,  they  were  bound  over  to  sobriety  and  industry,  they  were 
required  to  abstain  from  such  amusements  as  he  deemed  of 
immoral  tendency,  and  attendance  at  public  worship  was  en- 
joined. Besides  the  customary  ordinances,  there  was  divine 
service  in  a  cottage  set  apart  for  the  purpose,  the  villagers,  we 
are  told,  gladly  availing  themselves  of  the  additional  oppor- 
tunity. Schools  also  were  established,  not  in  Cardington  alone, 
but  in  the  neighboring  hamlets.  He  ruled  a  little  realm  of 
his  own ;  a  realm  which,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  was  very 
favorably  distinguished  from  the  surrounding  regions ;  an  un- 
marked patriarchal  domain,  whose  government  was,  on  the 
whole,  beneficent. 

When  we  contemplate  the  phenomenon  of  Howard's  influ- 
ence at  Cardington,  we  can  not  but  experience  a  strong  impulse 
to  question  the  fact  of  his  having  been,  even  intellectually,  the 
ordinary,  unoriginal  man  he  has  been  called.  It  is  fair  to 
recollef  t  that  he  was  of  that  class  which,  preeminently,  does 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  109 

ftothing ;  of  that  class  whose  epitaph  Mr.  Carlyle  has  written 
m  Sartor  Rcsartus.  His  task  was  not,  perhaps,  very  difficult ; 
but  just  think  of  the  effect,  if  every  English  landlord  performed 
his  duty  so  conscientiously  and  so  well.  A  biographer  of 
Howard,  writing  when  the  present  century  was  well  advanced, 
has  recorded  that  Cardington  still  retained,  among  English 
villages,  a  look  of  "  order,  neatness,  and  regularity."  If  mere 
common  sense  did  this,  it  was  common  sense  under  some  new 
motive  and  guidance ;  w^e  can  only  regret  that  it  so  rarely  fol- 
lows the  higher  light  of  godliness.  And  if  Howard's  claim  to 
positive  applause  is  slight,  what  are  we  to  say  of  his  exculpa- 
tion from  the  positive  sin  which,  during  that  century,  accumu- 
lated so  fearfully  on  the  head  of  certain  classes  and  corpora- 
tions in  England  ?  Different  had  been  the  prospect  now,  had 
England,  in  that  century,  been  covered  with  such  schools  as 
Howard's.  Surely  one  may  ask,  without  arrogance,  why  did 
not  the  Church  of  England  accomplish  at  least  so  much 
then? 

In  his  own  household,  there  reigned  calmness  and  cheerful 
content.  The  w^hole  air  and  aspect  of  the  place  was  such  as 
might  have  suggested  that  perfect  little  picture  by  Tennyson, 

"An  English  home — gray  twilight  pour'd 
On  dewy  pastures,  dewy  trees, 
Softer  than  sleep — all  things  in  order  stored, 
A  haunt  of  ancient  Peace." 

He  lived  much  in  the  consideration  of  Old  Testament  times 
and  worthies,  shaping  his  life  after  that  of  the  Hebrew  Patri- 
arch3.  His  Bible  was  to  him  a  treasury  of  truth,  which  he 
never  even  dreamed  inexhaustible.  As  he  looked  over  the 
brightening  scene  of  his  humble  endeavors,  and  the  pleasant 
bowers  around  his  own  dwelling,  and  felt  all  his  tranquil  joy 


110  HOWARD  ; 

represented  and  consummated  in  his  Harriet,  we  may  imagine 
these  words  breathing  through  his  heart — "  I  will  be  as  the 
dew  unto  Israel :"  as  the  dew,  stealing  noiselessly  down,  in  an 
evening  stillness,  unseen  by  any  eye,  yet  refreshing  the  very 
heart  of  nature.  Harriet,  with  all  her  simplicity,  was  a  per- 
fect wife ;  she  could  hear  the  beating  of  her  husband's  heart. 
)nce  there  was  somewhat  over  from  the  yearly  expenditure. 
Howard,  thinking  his  wife  might  derive  enjoyment  from  a  trip, 
proposed  that  they  should  spend  it  in  a  visit  to  London.  We 
think  Harriet  looked  quietly  into  his  eyes  as  she  answered, 
"  What  a  pretty  cottage  it  would  build !"  Conceive  the  smile 
of  silent  unspeakable  satisfaction,  of  deep  unbounded  love,  that 
would  spread  over  the  placid  features  of  Howard  as  he  heard 
these  words. 

The  part  taken  by  the  kind  and  gentle  Harriet  in  the  general 
dissemination  of  blessing  over  Howard's  neighborhood  was 
nowise  unimportant.  In  the  hour  of  sickness  and  distress,  she 
was  to  be  seen  by  the  bed  or  the  fireside,  supplying  little 
wants,  whispering  words  of  consolation.  She  also  made  it  a 
peculiar  part  of  her  duty  to  see  that  the  female  portion  of  the 
community  was  employed,  and  supply  them  with  work  when 
threatened  with  destitution. 

Thus  was  Howard,  cheered  and  assisted  by  his  wife,  an  un- 
assuming, godly  English  landlord,  doing  his  work,  and  never 
imagining  that  he  was  a  profitable  servant.  His  tenantry,  and 
specially  his  domestics,  loved  him  ;  although,  as  we  are  happy 
to  find,  since  it  is  an  almost  conclusive,  and  certainly  indispen- 
sable proof  of  decision  and  discrimination,  there  was  not  a  per- 
fect absence  of  murmuring  and  insinuation  against  him  in  the 
village.  He  engaged  in  constant  and  intimate  converse  with 
his  dependents,  interesting  himself  in  their  afiliirs,  and  giving 
little  pieces  of  advice.     He  might  be  seen  entering  their  cot 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     T  II  I  L  A  N  T  U  R  O  P  Y  .  Ill 

tages,  and  sitting  down  to  chat  and  eat  an  apple.  We  can 
figure  him,  too,  as  he  walked  along  the  road, 

"With  measured  footfall,  firm  and  mild," 

stopping  the  children  he  met,  giving  each  of  them  a  palfpenny, 
and  imparting  the  valuable  and  comprehensive  advice,  to  "  be 
good  children,  and  wash  their  hands  and  faces."  We  can  dis 
cern,  as  he  utters  the  words,  a  still  smile  of  peace  and  satisflic- 
tion  on  his  really  noble  English  countenance.  We  must  pro- 
nounce it  such.  There  was,  it  is  true,  no  sign  of  creative 
power  in  the  eye  ;  there  were  no  lines  of  deep  thought  on  the 
brow  ;  but  decision,  and  shrewdness,  and  intense  though  gov- 
erned kindness,  were  written  there.  Above  all,  it  was  cloud- 
less in  its  clearness.  It  was  the  calm,  open  coutenance  of  a 
man  who  could  look  the  world  in  the  face,  which  was  darkened 
by  no  stain  of  guile,  or  guilt,  or  self-contempt,  and  on  which, 
through  habitual  looking  upward,  there  was  a  glow  of  the 
mild  light  of  heaven.  Nor  was  it  destitute  of  certain  reposing 
strength,  a  look  of  complete  self  knowledge  and  self-mastery, 
gently  shaded,  as  it  was,  by  a  deep  but  manly  humility,  which 
told  again  of  the  bended  knee  and  the  secret  walk  with  God. 
When  we  look  at  Howard's  portrait,  we  cease  to  wonder  that 
his  face  was  always  received  as  an  unquestionable  pledge  of 
perfect  honor  and  substantial  character. 

There  was  one  drop  by  which  the  cup  of  happiness  in  the 
home  at  Cardington  might  still  have  been  augmented.  Howard 
and  his  wife  had  no  child.  Harriet  seems  to  have  been  pecu- 
liarly adapted  to  perform  the  duties  of  a  mother ;  so  gentle,  so 
full  of  quiet  sense,  so  well  able  to  read  a  want  ere  it  reached 
the  tongue.  At  length,  after  seven  years  of  married  life,  on 
Wednesday,  the  27th  of  March,  1765,  she  had  a  son.  On  the 
ensuing  Sabbath,  Howard  went  to  church  as  usual ;  all  seemed 


112  HOWARD  ; 

to  be  doing  well.  After  his  return  she  was  suddenly  taken  ill, 
and  died  in  his  arms.  She  had  just  seen  her  boy,  just  felt  the 
unuttered  happiness  of  a  new  love,  just  discerned  that  a  fresh 
brightness  rested  on  the  face  of  the  world,  and  then  she  had  to 
close  her  eyes,  and  lie  down  in  the  silent  grave. 

Howard's  feelings,  it  is  scarce  requisite  for  us  now  to  say, 
were  not  of  the  sort  which  commonly  reach  the  surface.  There 
was  nothing  sudden  or  impulsive  in  his  nature ;  his  very  kind- 
ness and  affection  were  ever  so  tempered,  ever  rendered  so 
equable,  by  consideration,  that  they  might  at  times  wear  the 
mask  of  austerity.  But  we  can  not  doubt  that  the  sorrow  he 
felt  for  his  Harriet  reached  the  innermost  deeps  of  his  soul. 
A  light  had  passed  from  the  "  revolving  year ;"  the  flowers 
which  Love  may  strew  in  the  path  of  the  "  stern  daughter  of 
the  voice  of  God  " — for  Duty  herself  strews  no  flowers — had 
withered  away ;  until  he  again  clasped  the  hand  of  Harriet,  his 
enjoyment  had  ceased.  He  laid  her  in  her  grave,  and  a  simple 
tablet  in  Cardington  Church  told  the  simple  truth,  that  she  had 
"  opened  her  mouth  with  wisdom,  and  in  her  tongue  was  the  law 
of  kindness."  A  good  many  years  afterward,  on  the  eve  of  a 
departure  for  the  Continent,  from  which  Howard  might  never 
return,  he  was  walking  with  his  son  in  his  grounds,  and  men- 
tioning some  improvements  which  he  had  contemplated: — 
"  These,  however.  Jack,"  he  said,  "  in  case  I  should  not  come 
back,  you  will  pursue  or  not,  as  you  may  think  proper  ;  but 
remember,  this  walk  was  planted  by  your  mother  ;  and  if  ever 
you  touch  a  twig  of  it,  may  blessing  never  rest  upon  you !" 

His  infant  son  was  now  all  that  was  left  on  earth  to  Howard 
He  loved  him  with  the  whole  force  of  his  nature.  Two  strong 
feelings,  having  reference  to  this  earth,  and  two  alone,  were,  in 
the  years  of  his  long  journeyings,  to  be  found  in  his  bosom :  the 
one  was  the  memory  of  Harriet,  the  other  the  love  of  his  boy. 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  113 

But  it  is  not  unimportant  to  a  perfect  comprehension  of  the 
character  of  Howard,  to  know  that  there  was,  in  his  general 
deportment  as  husband  and  father,  a  gravity,  decision,  and 
authority,  which  wore  the  aspect  of  austereness.  The  founder 
of  phikxnthropy  was  as  free  as  ever  man  from  any  form  of  sentl- 
mentalism ;  it  was  for  real  affliction,  for  substantial  pain,  he 
"elt  and  acted ;  a  tender,  winning,  soothing  manner  was  never 
his.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  modern  philanthropists,  he 
certainly  was  not  one  w^hose  feelings  carried  him  away,  who 
saw  distress  and  injustice,  and,  bursting  into  tears,  rushed, 
halt-blinded  with  his  sympathy,  to  make  bad  worse.  lie  has 
been  spoken  of  by  some  as  if  he  resembled  one  who,  perceiv- 
ing a  child  drowning  in  a  reservoir,  and  being  moved  to  pity 
by  its  cries,  casts  down  an  embankment  to  save  it,  and  floods 
a  whole  country.  He  was  no  such  man.  Since  the  world  be- 
gan, until  he  appeared,  no  one  had  done  so  much  for  the  relief 
of  distress,  simply  as  such ;  and  yet  we  feel  convinced  that 
very  few  men  have  lived  who  could  look  upon  pain  with 
calmer  countenance  than  he.  Nineteen  men  in  twenty  had 
been  weeping,  and  either  blundering,  or  leaving  the  distress 
alone  ;  How^ard  remained  quite  cool,  looked  at  it,  measured  it, 
mastered  it. 

For  about  a  year  after  the  death  of  his  wife,  he  continued  to 
reside  at  Cardington.  Toward  the  end  of  the  year  1766,  we 
find  him  visiting  Bath ;  ill-health  had  again,  in  new  extremity, 
returned  upon  him.  In  the  spring  of  the  following  year,  he 
traveled  to  Holland,  and  quickly  returning  home,  remained  ac 
Cardington,  until  it  was  time  to  send  his  son  to  school.  In  the 
interval,  nothing  worthy  of  notice  occurred ;  he  pursued  his 
old  plans  for  the  improvement  of  his  neighborhood,  deriving 
his  principal  comfort  from  his  boy. 

At  length  it  became  proper  to  send  his  son  to  school,  and 


114  HOWARD  ; 

Howard  prepared  again  to  visit  the  Continent.  Cardington 
had  now,  indeed,  become  sad  to  him.  He  in  great  measure 
broke  up  his  establishment  there,  providing,  with  his  own  con- 
siderate kindness,  for  his  domestics;  these,  as  we  have  hinted, 
and  as  has  been  elsewhere  remarked,  loved  him  with  an  affec- 
tion worthy  of  the  servants  of  an  old  patriarch.  He  departed 
in  the  autumn  of  1769 ;  his  intention  was  to  visit  the  south  of 
Italy,  and  probably  remain  there  for  the  winter :  he  went  by 
Calais,  the  south  of  France,  and  Geneva. 

We  come  now  to  what  we  consider  a  most  important  epoch 
in  Howard's  life.  We  have  not  failed  to  inform  the  reader  of 
the  pervasion,  from  a  period  too  early  to  be  precisely  fixed,  of 
his  whole  character,  by  godliness ;  and  we  saw  how  the  fact  in- 
fluenced his  benevolent  exertions  in  Bedfordshire.  We  have 
not  yet,  however,  looked,  so  to  speak,  into  the  heart  of  How- 
ard's religion ;  we  have  only  noted  it  incidentally,  and  from 
afar.  We  proceed  to  view  it  more  closely ;  it  will  be  of  great 
importance  to  ascertain  the  weight  and  nature  of  its  influence. 
We  are  assured — that  we  have  arrived  at  a  period  when  his 
spiritual  life  reached  a  crisis,  which  determined,  in  certain  im- 
portant respects,  his  future  character  and  career.  Since  it  is 
necessary  to  carry  readers  along  ^vith  us  in  our  impressions, 
we  turn  to  our  narrative. 

We  have  said  that  Howard  had  intention  of  spending  the 
winter  either  in  the  south  of  Italy  or  Geneva.  On  arriving  at 
Turin,  he  abandoned  the  project.  We  learn  from  his  own 
words  that  he  had  been  pondering  seriously  the  object  and  na 
ture  of  his  journey.  He  accused  himself  of  misspending  the 
"  talent"  committed  to  him,  of  gratifying  a  mere  curiosity  with 
those  pecuniary  means  which  might  be  turned  in  some  way  to 
God's  glory,  and  which  were  necessarily  withdrawn  from  works 
of  mercy ;  he  thought  of  the  loss  of  so  many  English  Sab- 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PIIILANTHROrY.  115 

"baths;  he  thought  of  "a  retrospective  view  on  a  death-bed;" 
he  thought  also  of  his  "  distance  from  his  dear  boy."  He  de- 
termined to  return.  He  concludes  the  memorandum  from 
which  we  gather  these  facts  in  the  following  words  :* — "  Look 
forward,  oh  my  soul !  How  low,  how  mean,  how  little,  is 
every  thing  but  what  has  a  view  to  that  glorious  world  of 
light,  life,  and  love.  The  preparation  of  the  heart  is  of  God. 
Prepare  the  heart,  oh  God !  of  thy  unworthy  creature,  and 
unto  Thee  be  all  the  glory,  through  the  boundless  ages  of 
eternity. 

"This  night  my  trembling  soul  almost  longs  to  take  its 
flight  to  see  and  know  the  wonders  of  redeeming  love — -join 
the  triumphant  choir ;  sin  and  sorrow  fled  away,  God,  my  Re- 
deemer, all  m  all.  Oh !  happy  spirits  that  are  safe  in  those 
mansions." 

He  turned  homeward,  and  in  February  we  find  him  at  the 
Hague.  We  have  here  a  further  record  of  his  spiritual  life. 
We  extract  it  entire. 

"  Hague,  Sunday  evening,  February  11. 
"  I  would  record  the  goodness  of  God  to  the  unworthiest  of  his 
creatures :  for  some  days  past,  a  habitual  serious  frame,  relent- 
ing for  my  sin  and  folly,  applying  to  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ, 
solemnly  surrendering  myself  and  babe  to  Him,  begging  the 
conduct  of  His  Holy  Spirit ;  I  hope,  a  more  tender  conscience," 
evinced  "by  a  greater  fear  of  the  offending  God,  a  temper 
more  abstracted  from  this  world,  more  resigned  to  death  oi 
life,  thirsting  for  union  and  communion  with  God,  as  my  Lord 
and  my  God.  Oh  !  the  wonders  of  redeeming  love !  Some 
faint  hope,"  that  "  even  I !  through  redeeming  mercy  in  the 

*  Howard  did  not  -w^rite  English  grammatically ;  we  alter  the  spell- 
ing and  punctuation. 


116  HOWARD  ; 

perfect  righteousness,  the  full  atoning  sacrifice,  shall  ere  long 
be  made  the  monument  of  the  rich,  free  grace  and  mercy  of 
God,  through  the  divine  Redeemer.  Oh,  shout  my  soul! 
Grace,  grace,  free,  sovereign,  rich  and  unbounded  grace !  Not 
I,  not  I,  an  ill-deserving,  hell-deserving  creature !  But,  where 
sin  has  abounded,  I  trust  grace  superabounds.  Some  hope ! — 
what  joy  in  that  hope ! — that  nothing  shall  separate  my  soul 
from  the  love  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus ;  and,  my  soul,  as  such 
a  frame  is  thy  delight,  pray  frequently  and  fervently  to  the 
Father  of  spirits,  to  bless  His  word,  and  your  retired  mo- 
ments to  your  serious  conduct  in  life. 

"  Let  not,  my  soul,  the  interests  of  a  moment  engross  thy 
thoughts,  or  be  preferred  to  my  eternal  interests.  Look  for- 
ward to  that  glory  which  will  be  revealed  to  those  who  are 
faithful  to  death.  My  soul,  walk  thou  with  God ;  be  faithful ; 
hold  on,  hold  out ;  and  then — what  words  can  utter.    J.  H." 

We  anxiously  desire  to  avoid  presumption  here,  and  would 
leave  every  reader  to  his  own  judgment  and  conclusion  in  the 
matter ;  but  we  think  we  are  not  altogether  unable  to  trace 
the  workings  of  Howard's  mind  through  this  portion  of  his 
history. 

It  seems  to  us  that,  on  leaving  Cardington,  his  mind  had  en- 
gaged in  deep  reflection.  His  boy  had  gone  away  from  him ; 
his  Harriet  was  sleeping  silently,  her  tender  ways  were  to 
cheer  him  no  more ;  he  looked  over  his  past  life,  from  which 
the  last  rays  of  joy's  sunlight  were  departing ;  he  looked  for- 
ward to  an  old  age,  embittered  by  perpetual  ill-health.  His 
mind  awoke,  in  the  discipline  of  sorrow,  to  a  deeper  earnest- 
ness. He  felt,  with  sterner  realization  than  heretofore,  that 
the  world  was  a  desert,  and  time  a  dream ;  with  a  new  and 
tremendous  energy  his  soul  rose  toward  the  eternal  kingdoms. 


AND     THE     RISE     OP     PIIILANTUROPY.  llY 

He  looked  with  earnest  scrutiny  within,  he  closed  his  eye  more 
to  all  around,  and  gazed  upward  from  his  knees  for  the  smiling 
of  one  countenance  upon  him.  The  intensity  of  his  feelings 
would  not  comport  with  the  prosecution  of  his  journey  to 
Italy.  He  mused  upon  it  in  the  strain  we  have  indicated.  He 
concluded  that  it  was  his  duty  to  return  home  ;  and,  in  a  state 
of  mind  not  a  little  agitated,  proceeded  in  the  direction  of 
England.  We  can  not  certainly  say  whether  it  had  been  his 
immediate  intention  to  return  to  Cardington ;  he  was  very 
fond  of  Holland,  and  would,  perhaps,  at  the  Hague,  be  able  to 
enjoy  Sabbaths  like  those  of  his  home.  Be  this  as  it  may,  he 
did  not  proceed  further  than  the  place  last  named.  His  mind 
appears  here  to  have  become  calmer ;  we  might  say,  indeed, 
that  the  second  extract  we  have  made  reveals  an  almost 
rapturous  frame  of  spirit.  It  is  a  detail  of  God's  goodness 
toward  him ;  and  let  it  be  rehiarked,  that  this  goodness  con- 
sists in  work  wrought  in  him,  in  his  closer  approximation  to 
the  requirements  of  God's  law.  The  man  who  can  feel 
ecstatic  joy  for  that,  and  give  God  all  the  glory,  has  nothing 
higher  to  attain  to  in  this  world;  and  on  him  no  essential 
change  will  be  wrought  by  passing  through  the  gates  of 
heaven. 

He  again  turned  southward.  At  Lyons  we  find  him  writing 
thus : — 

"Lyons,  April  4,  1110. 

"  Repeated  instances  of  the  unwearied  mercy  and  goodness 
of  God :  preserved  hitherto  in  health  and  safety !  Blessed  be 
the  name  of  the  Lord  !  Endeavor,  oh  my  soul !  to  cultivate 
and  maintain  a  thankful,  serious,  humble  and  resigned  frame 
and  temper  of  mind.  May  it  be  thy  chief  desire  that  the 
honor  of  God,  the  spread  of  the  Redeemer's  name  and  Gospel, 
may  be  promoted.     Oh,  consider  the  everlasting  worth  of 


118  Howard; 

spiritual  and  divine  enjoyments,  then  thou  wilt  see  the  vanity 
and  nothingness  of  worldly  pleasures.  Remember,  oh  my  soul ! 
St.  Paul,  who  was  determined  to  know  nothing  in  comparison 
to  Jesus  Christ,  and  Him  crucified.  A  tenderness  of  con- 
science I  would  ever  cultivate ;  no  step  would  I  take  without 
acknowledging  God.  I  hope  my  present  journey,  though 
again  into  Italy,  is  no  way  wrong,  rejoicing  if  in  any  respect  I 
could  bring  the  least  improvement  that  might  be  of  use  to  my 
own  country.  But,  oh  my  soul,  stand  in  awe,  and  sin  not ; 
daily,  fervently  pray  for  restraining  grace  ;  remember,  if 
thou  desirest  the  death  of  the  righteous,  and  thy  latter  end 
like  his,  thy  life  must  be  so  also.  In  a  little  while  thy  course 
will  be  run,  thy  sands  finished :  a  parting  farewell  with  my 
ever  dear  boy,  and  then,  oh  my  soul,  be  weighed  in  the  balance 
—wanting,  wanting !  but  oh,  the  glorious  hope  of  an  interest 
in  the  blood  and  righteousness  of  my  Redeemer  and  my  God ! 
In  the  most  solemn  manner  I  commit  my  spirit  into  thy  hand, 
oh  Lord  God  of  my  salvation ! 

"  My  hope  in  time !  my  trust  through  the  boundless  ages  of 
eternity !  John  Howard." 

The  last  quotation  we  deem  it  necessary  to  make,  is  one  of 
very  great  importance.  It  commences  with  a  slight  retrospect 
and  self-examination  ;  it  passes  into  a  deliberate  dedication  of 
himself  and  his  all  to  God : — 

"I^APLES,  May  2Y,  mO. 
"  When  I  left  Italy  last  year,  it  then  appeared  most  prudent 
and  proper ;  my  return,  I  hope,  is  under  the  best  direction, 
not  presumptuous,  being  left  to  the  folly  of  a  foolish  heart. 
Not  having  the  strongest  spirits  or  constitution,  my  continuing 
long  in  Holland  or  any  place  lowers  my  spirits ;  so  I  thought 
returning  would  be  no  uneasiness  on  the  review,  as  sinful  and 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PUILANTIIROPY.  119 

vain  diversions  are  not  my  object,  but  the  honor  and  glory  of 
God  my  highest  ambition.  Did  I  now  sec  it  wrong  by  being 
the  cause  of  pride,  I  would  go  back ;  but  being  deeply  sensible 
it  is  the  presence  of  God  that  makes  the  happiness  of  every 
place,  so,  oh  my  soul !  keep  close  to  Him  in  the  amiable  light 
of  redeeming  love ;  and  amid  the  snares  thou  art  particularly 
exposed  to  in  a  country  of  such  wickedness  and  folly,  stand 
thou  in  awe,  and  sin  not.  Commune  with  thine  own  heart ; 
see  what  progress  thou  makest  in  thy  religious  journey  !  Art 
thou  nearer  the  heavenly  Canaan,  the  vital  flame  burning 
clearer  and  clearer  1  or  are  the  concerns  of  a  moment  engross- 
ing thy  foolish  heart  1  Stop ;  remember  thou  art  a  candidate 
for  eternity :  daily,  fervently  pray  for  wisdom ;  lift  up  your 
eyes  to  the  Eock  of  Ages,  and  then  look  down  on  the  glory  of 
this  world.  A  little  while,  and  thy  journey  will  be  ended ;  be 
thou  faithful  unto  death.  Duty  is  thine,  though  the  power  is 
God's ;  pray  to  Him  to  give  thee  a  heart  to  hate  sin  more, 
uniting  thy  heart  in  his  fear.  Oh,  magnify  the  Lord,  my  soul, 
and,  my  spirit,  rejoice  in  God  my  Saviour  !  His  free  grace,  un- 
bounded mercy,  love  unparalleled,  goodness  unlimited.  And 
oh,  this  mercy,  this  love,  this  goodness  exerted  for  me  !  Lord 
God,  why  me*?  When  I  consider,  and  look  into  my  heart,  I 
doubt,  I  tremble.  Such  a  vile  creature  ;  sin,  folly,  and  imper- 
fection in  every  action !  Oh,  dreadful  thought ! — a  body  of 
sin  and  death  I  carry  about  me,  ever  ready  to  depart  from 
God ;  and  with  all  the  dreadful  catalogue  of  sins  committed, 
my  heart  faints  within  me,  and  almost  despairs.  But  yet,  oh 
my  soul,  why  art  thou  cast  down  1  why  art  thou  disquieted  ? 
Hope  in  God !  His  free  grace  in  Jesus  Christ !  Lord,  I  be- 
lieve ;  help  my  unbelief.  Shall  I  limit  the  grace  of  God  ? 
Can  I  fathom  His  goodness  1  Here,  on  His  sacred  day,  I,  once 
more  in  the  dust  before  the  Eternal  God,  acknowledge  my  sins 


120  HOWARD  ; 

heinous  and  aggravated  in  His  sight.  I  would  have  the  deepest 
sorrow  and  contrition  of  heart,  and  cast  my  guilty  and  polluted 
soul  on  thy  sovereign  mercy  in  the  Redeemer.  Oh,  compas- 
sionate and  divine  Redeemer,  save  me  from  the  dreadful  guilt 
and  power  of  sin,  and  accept  my  solemn,  free,  and,  I  trust,  un- 
reserved full  surrender  of  my  soul,  my  spirit,  my  dear  child, 
all  I  am  and  have,  into  thy  hands  !  Unworthy  of  thy  accept- 
ance !  Yet,  oh  Lord  God  of  mercy,  spurn  me  not  from  thy 
presence  ;  accept  of  me,  vile  as  I  am — I  hope  a  repenting,  re- 
iurning  prodigal.  I  glory  in  my  choice,  acknowledge  my  obli- 
gations as  a  servant  of  the  Most  High  God ;  and  now  may 
the  Eternal  God  be  my  refuge,  and  thou,  my  soul,  faithful  to 
that  God  that  will  never  leave  or  forsake  thee ! 

"  Thus,  oh  my  Lord  and  my  God,  is  humbly  bold  even  a 
%vorm  to  covenant  with  Thee !  Do  Thou  ratify  and  confirm 
it,  and  make  me  the  everlasting  monument  of  Thy  unbound- 
ed mercy.  Amen,  amen,  amen.  Glory  to  God  the  Father, 
God  the  Son,  and  God  the  Holy  Ghost,  forever  and  ever, 
amen ! 

"Hoping  my  heart  deceives  me  not,  and  trusting  in  His 
mercy  for  restraining  and  preventing  grace,  though  rejoicing 
in  returning  what  I  have  received  of  Him  into  His  hands,  yet 
with  fear  and  trembling  I  sign  my  unworthy  name. 

John  Howard." 

Howard  was  not  a  man  who  found  any  special  delight  in 
'ising  his  pen  ;  the  deep  modesty  of  his  nature,  the  deficiency 
of  his  education,  his  consequent  want  of  affluence  in  expression, 
and  the  whole  structure  of  his  character  as  universally  recog- 
nized, put  this  beyond  dispute.  It  was  only  when  his  heart 
was  very  full,  and  the  emotions  with  which  it  burned  were  as 
mounting  lava,  that  they  overflowed  through  that  channel. 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PIIILANXnilOPY.  121 

We  regard  the  expressions  ^vc  .lave  found  him  using  simply  as 
pulses  of  his  spiritual  life,  proceeding  as  truly  from  the  center 
of  his  spiritual  nature  as  the  blood  which  at  fever  heat  might 
gush  from  his  heart,  from  the  center  of  his  physical  frame. 
And  consider  the  earnestness,  the  stammering,  gasping  intens- 
ity, with  which  they  start  ruggedly  forth;  mark  the  awe- 
struck humility  wdth  which  he  bows  down  before  the  Infinite 
God,  and,  as  it  were,  the  mute  amazement  of  gratitude,  which, 
when  the  smile  of  God  falls  out  of  heaven  upon  his  head,  forces 
him  to  exclaim,  "  Lord  God,  why  me  ?"  Surely  this  last  is  a 
remarkable  passage  of  feeling.  Will  it  not  be  with  such  an 
emotion  that  the  redeemed  of  God,  w^hen  the  eternal  inherit- 
ance, so  far  surpassing  expectation  and  desert,  at  last  and  sud- 
denly bursts  upon  their  sight,  shall  shrink  from  asserting  their 
right,  and  exclaim,  "  Lord,  when  did  we  merit  this  V  Observe, 
finally,  here,  respecting  Howard,  the  completeness  of  the  result, 
the  unwavering,  unexeepting  abdication  of  the  throne  of  the 
soul  to  God.  We  think  this  was  the  consummation  of  the  epoch 
in  his  spiritual  history  of  which  we  have  spoken. 

One  other  remark  we  must  make  respecting  these  docu- 
ments. In  those  awful  moments,  when  Howard  was  alone 
with  God,  and  his  eyes,  looking  to  the  Rock  of  Ages,  were  so 
solemnly  raised  above  every  concern  of  time,  there  was  yet 
one  earthly  visitant  that  entered  the  secret  places  of  his  heart : 
that  visitant  was  his  boy.     We  add  no  comment. 

Tlie  time  was  now  near  w^hen  Howard  was  to  find  his  pecu- 
liar work.  We  think,  though  with  reverence  and  hesitation, 
it  may  be  said  that  he  was  specially  fitted  for  it  by  God.  Im- 
planted by  nature  in  his  bosom,  he  exhibited  from  his  earliest 
years  a  deep  and  a  notably  cosmopolitan  compassion  for  the 
afllicted  as  such.  In  early  years  his  nature  w^as  stilled,  hal- 
lowed, and  strengthened  by  religious  principle.     As  he  ad- 

6 


122  HOWARD  ; 

Yanced  in  years,  the  great  truths  of  Calvinism,  or  rather  that 
one  great  truth  of  Calvinism,  The  Lord  reigneth — the  Lord, 
just,  sovereign,  incomprehensible,  in  whose  presence  no  finite 
being  can  speak — formed  a  basis,  as  it  were  of  adamant,  for 
his  whole  character.  He  was  sorely  tried  by  physical  ail- 
ments, and,  at  the  risk  of  his  life,  was  compelled  to  pursue 
igidly  abstemious  habits,  being  thus  also  debarred  from  all 
he  pleasures  of  the  great  world.  He  was  brought  soon  into 
actual  expevieiice  of  the  distresses  suffered  by  the  inhabitants 
of  prisons,  and  his  first  piece  of  positive  w^ork  in  the  world 
was  the  relief  of  such.  His  character  was  next  matured,  con- 
firmed, and  mellowed,  in  the  soft  summer  light  of  a  quiet 
English  home,  where  he  loved  and  was  loved  by  a  true  wife, 
and  where,  in  such  tasks  as  we  have  seen,  a  mild  apprentice- 
ship was  served  to  thoroughness  and  accuracy.  He  was  then 
suddenly  and  awfully  struck  with  affliction ;  she  who  was  so 
very  beautiful  in  his  eyes, 

"Fair  as  a  star,  when  only  one 
Is  shining  in  the  sky," 

was  taken  away  from  him.  And  then,  after  a  little  time, 
came  that  crisis  in  his  spiritual  history  which  we  have  endeav- 
ored to  delineate.  Whatever  were  his  natural  abilities,  he 
awoke  from  that  crisis  with  a  moral  strength  which  no  force 
of  temptation  could  overcome,  and  a  calm  dauntlessness 
which  nothing  earthly  could  turn  aside.  Then  he  found  his 
work. 

Howard's  history  thus  seems  to  suggest  the  idea  that  God 
intended  by  him  to  bring  prominently  before  the  world  some 
truth  not  hitherto  duly  regarded,  to  accomplish  some  work  not 
hitherto  adequately  done :  that  the  time  had  arived  when  some 
gospel — shall  we  call  it  the  gospel  of  love  ? — was  to  be  more 


AND    THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  123 

specially  and  explicitly  unfolded  than  it  had  been  heretofore. 
With  deliberate  and  immovable  faith,  he  himself  entertained 
this  belief,  and  we  know  not  how  more  fitly  or  fully  to  embody 
our  opinion  of  Howard's  part  in  this  work,  and  our  view  of 
the  invisible  power  which  guided  him  therein,  than  in  his  own 
humble,  yet,  we  think,  even  sublime  words,  written  when  it 
was  well-nigh  finished  : — "  I  am  not  at  all  angry  with  the  re- 
flections that  some  persons  make,  as  they  think  to  my  dispar 
agement,  because  all  they  say  of  this  kind  gives  God  the 
greater  honor;  in  whose  Almighty  hand  no  instrument  is 
weak ;  in  whose  presence  no  flesh  must  glory  :  but  the  whole 
conduct  of  this  matter  must  be  ascribed  to  Providence  alone, 
and  God  by  me  intimates  to  the  world,  however  weak  and  un- 
worthy I  ain,  that  He  espouses  the  cause^^  and  to  Ilim^  to  Him 
alone,  be  all  the  praise.^'' 

Eeturning  from  the  Continent,  Howard  remained  for  a  cer- 
tain period  at  Cardington ;  we  hear  of  nothing  remarkable  in 
his  life  for  some  time.  The  state  of  his  health  in  1772  ren- 
dered it  advisable  to  make  a  tour  in  the  Channel  Islands,  but 
he  speedily  returned  to  Bedfordshire.  Here,  in  1773,  he  was 
called  to  the  office  of  sheriflf  of  the  county.  He  considered  it 
his  duty  to  comply  with  the  invitation,  and  became  such. 
Prudence  might  have  whispered  another  decision.  He  was  a 
Dissenter,  and  by  becoming  sheriff*  incurred  the  liability  of 
very  severe  penalties.  We  do  not  suppose  that  his  danger  was 
very  great ;  but  it  was  real.  He  was  not  without  enemies ; 
and  his  act  put  it  in  the  power  of  any  one  of  them,  with  profit 
to  himself,  to  inflict  very  serious  injury  on  him.  It  is,  besides, 
the  part  of  prudence  to  guard  against  possibilities :  there  was, 
at  least,  the  possibility  that  he  might  suflfer.  Howard,  how- 
ever, with  all  his  calmness,  was  too  brave  to  be  distinctively 
*  The  italics  are  Howard's. 


124  HOWARD  ; 

prudent.  It  might  astonish  some  to  find  this  among  his 
adopted  maximS' — "  A  fearless  temper  and  an  open  heart  are 
seldom  strictly  allied  to  prudence."  It  is  the  maxim  of  a 
truly  brave  m.an.  In  this  affair  of  the  sheriffdom  he  just  kept 
prudence  in  its  proper  place;  when  the  voice  of  duty  was 
clear,  its  mouth  was  shut. 

The  office  of  sheriff  had  been  hitherto  but  a  dignifying  ap- 
pendage,  its  duties  mainly  those  of  show.  Howard  could  not 
regard  or  treat  it  thus.  He  went  to  his  work  as  usual,  quietly, 
accurately,  thoroughly.  From  time  immemorial,  abuses  had 
prevailed ;  safely  wrapped  in  the  mantle  of  custom,  they  had 
lived,  and  moved,  and  done  their  measure  of  evil,  unregarded 
as  smoke.  The  cool,  clear  eye  of  Howard,  looking  straight  to 
the  heart  of  every  thing,  could  not  but  regard  them.  He  had 
not  acted  long  in  the  capacity  of  sheriff  when  his  attention 
was  arrested  by  something  which  struck  him  as  strange  and 
anomalous  :  something  which  had  its  existence  amid  the  light 
of  a  brilliant  and  boasted  civilization,  but  which  was  fitted 
rather  to  cower,  snake-like  and  slimy,  in  the  jungles  of  darkest 
barbarism.  He  fixed  his  attention  upon  certain  persons  who 
were  declared  not  guilty  by  the  voice  of  their  countrymen, 
who  were  acquitted  of  every  thing  laid  to  their  charge,  and 
thus  proved  to  have  endured  the  hard  affliction  of  confinement 
and  temporary  disgrace,  when  their  country  had  nothing  what- 
ever to  say  against  them.  He  saw  that  these,  on  their  acquit- 
tal, did  not  at  once  return  to  their  welcoming  and  consoling 
friends;  that  their  chains  were  not  at  once  struck  off,  with 
urgent  haste  and  self-accusing  regret :  they  were  positively 
conveyed  back  to  prison,  until  they  should  pay  certain  fees  to 
functionaries  connected  with  the  jail  and  court.  Others,  who 
also  might  have  suffered  months  of  confinement,  and  against 
whom,  from  the  non-appearance  of  their  prosecutors,  not  even 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  125 

a  charge  was  preferred,  were  similarly  treated.  Others  still, 
regarding  whom  the  grand  jury  could  not  find  such  evidence 
of  guilt  as  rendered  it  reasonable  to  try  them,  went  the  same 
way  : — all,  without  semblance  of  accusation,  were  hailed  back 
to  prison.  This  cruel  and  glaring  outrage  on  justice  and  feel- 
ing was  quietly  taking  its  course,  and  was  likely  for  some  time 
to  do  so  in  the  county  of  Bedford,  when  it  fixed  the  gaze  of 
John  Howard.  Its  days  were  then  numbered.  His  proceed 
ings  were  quick  :  observation,  decision,  and  action,  seemed  al- 
most to  have  been  united.  The  abuse  was  undeniable  and  in- 
defensible ;  its  mode  of  cure  was  by  paying,  in  some  other 
manner,  the  functionaries  interested.  The  justices  of  the 
county  were  the  men  to  be  applied  to ;  the  application  was 
made.  A  new  thing  in  the  experience  of  these  sedate  func- 
tionaries ;  it  was  proper  to  j^roceed  with  caution,  deliberation, 
and  prudence.  The  good,  formal,  drowsy  justices  looked  up 
through  their  spectacles,  and — found  it  necessary — to  satisfy 
their  minds — by  seeing  a  precedent.  Here,  then,  perhaps,  the 
matter  would  stop,  and  the  justices  be  troubled  in  their  dozing 
no  further.  Howard  did  not  stop.  A  precedent  must  be  found  : 
he  takes  horse  at  once,  and  proceeds  to  seek  it  in  the  neighbor- 
ing counties. 

In  these  counties,  Howard  met  on  all  hands  with  injustice 
and  disorder,  but  found  no  precedent  for  his  proposed  remedy. 
He  saw  more  than  he  expected,  and  more  than  he  came  to 
seek.  In  his  own  simple  words,  he  "beheld  scenes  of  calam- 
ity," Such  he  could  not  see  without  a  desire  to  alleviate ;  and 
a  desire  with  Howard,  of  necessity,  became  action.  Gradually 
it  became  plain  to  him  that  he  had  discovered  a  great  work  to 
be  done,  and  that  he  was  the  man  intended  by  God  to  do  it. 
In  the  performance  of  this  work  it  was  that  the  rest  of  his  life 
was  spent,  and  that  his  name  became  known  and  reverenced  in 


126  HOWARD  ; 

every  land  unclei:  heaven.  We  have  three  questions  to  put 
and  to  answer  respecting  it :  What  was  it  1  By  what  motives 
was  Howard  impelled  to  undertake  it  1  How  did  he  perform 
it?  It  will  be  important,  also,  to  consider,  as  we  proceed, 
whether  it  had  "become  necessary. 

What,  then,  first  of  all,  was  this  work  of  Howard's  ?  Hav- 
ing already  spoken  at  large  of  philanthropy,  we  shall  not  entei 
here  upon  the  general  subject ;  to  define  Howard's  particulai 
part  in  calling  it  into  existence  is  easy. 

Correspondent  to,  and  resulting  from,  the  sad  discordance 
and  rent  in  the  individual  human  soul,  there  has  been,  in  all 
ages,  a  great  severance  in  the  human  family.  A  part  of  that 
family  has  always  been  put  aside  by  the  rest,  and  subjected  to 
penal  inflictions.  Sorrowful,  truly,  is  the  aspect  thus  opened 
up  to  us.  In  the  many-chambered  dwelling  framed  for  them 
by  their  Father,  men  could  not  live  together  and  at  peace. 
The  roof  and  spires  of  that  dwelling  seem  to  rest  in  sunshine ; 
in  the  higher  apartments  is  the  voice  of  mirth  and  gladness  ; 
lower  down  the  darkness  of  sorrow  begins  to  thicken ;  and, 
beneath  all,  there  have  ever  been  lightless  dungeons,  from 
which,  through  the  whole  course  of  human  history,  have  arisen 
the  broken  groans  of  agony,  or  the  lone  wailings  of  despair. 
By  a  stern  and  awful  necessity,  these  dungeons  were  never 
empty  ;  men  were  compelled  to  chain  down  their  brothers  in 
the  darkness,  lest,  like  maniacs,  they  should  plunge  their  knives 
in  the  hearts  that  pitied  them,  or,  like  fiends,  bring  on  all  the 
destruction  of  Sodom  ;  never  out  of  the  ears  of  humanity  could 
pass  the  doleful  voice  of  lamentation,  crying,  like  the  conscience 
of  the  race,  "  Fallen,  fallen,  fallen." 

Respecting  these  dungeons,  and  their  inhabitants,  three 
methods  lay  open  to  those  who  had  been  bold  to  take  their 
fellow-men  and  fling  them  in  fetters  out  of  their  sight     They 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  12*7 

might  look  do\Mi  upon  them  with  the  fierce  glare  of  indignation, 
hate,  and  "revenge;"  they  might  say,  "Caitiffs,  we  hate  you," 
ye  have  passed  beyond  the  range  of  law  and  pity,  our  duty 
towards  you  now  is  to  load  the  whip,  and  to  whet  the  ax.  Or 
they  might  adapt  a  milder,  but  still  more  cruel  mode  of  pro- 
cedure. They  might  turn  them,  in  sickened  horror,  from  the 
sight  of  the  anguish  whose  existence  they  would  forget ;  they 
might  carefully  deafen  the  walls,  and  stop  up  every  avenue 
through  which  the  sounds  of  woe  might  ascend ;  they  might 
then  urge  the  dance,  and  laugh,  and  sing,  they  might  sweep  on 
m  the  glad  pageantry  of  coronation  and  victory,  they  might 
listen  to  the  chantings  of  solemn  organs,  or  the  light  tremblings 
of  bridal  music,  unsaddened  by  any  cloud  that  floated  up  from 
below.  Meanwhile,  calamity  might  be  waxing  greater  and 
greater  there,  writing  its  pale  emblems  on  too  many  faces ; 
famine,  pestilence,  torture,  and  all  injustice,  might  enter  unseen ; 
a  groan  of  agony  might  go  up  to  heaven,  yet  pass  unheard  by 
men  on  earth.  Or,  lastly,  they  might  say.  Be  these  tenants  of 
the  dungeon  what  they  may,  they  are  the  children  of  our  Father, 
the  creatures  of  our  God ;  we  dare  do  toward  them  precisely 
what  He  commands,  and  has  rendered  necessary.  We  shall 
then  avoid  the  fury  of  the  first  method,  and  the  cruel  cowardice 
of  the  second.  We  shall  not,  in  weak  and  inhuman  indolence, 
shut  our  ears  to  the  sounds  of  human  woe ;  we  shall  know 
what  the  case  is,  that  we  may  meet  its  requirements  :  neither 
shall  we,  as  avenging  demons,  pour  the  lava  of  wrath  and  re- 
venge  on  the  heads  of  our  fellow-men :  we  shall  do  what  law 
ordains,  and  that  alone :  we  shall  light  the  lamp  of  Justice,  and 
commit  it  to  the  hand  of  Love. 

Of  the  first  and  last  of  these  methods  we  have  already  spoken, 
At  the  time  when  Howard  appeared,  the  second  was  widely 
and  sadly  prevalent ;  and  the  work  he  did  may  be  briefly  but 


128  HOWARD  ; 

compendiously  indicated  in  these  words  : — He  penetrated  into 
the  dungeons  of  the  world,-  and  compelled  men  to  hear  the 
voice  of  the  agony  beneath  their  feet.  The  result  of  this  work 
was,  that  a  voice  of  pity  was  heard  over  the  world,  saying  that 
cruelty  had  gone  too  far,  and  that  the  third  method  must  now 
be  attempted. 

We  inquire  next.  In  what  light  did  he  regard  his  work,  and 
what  motives  impelled  him  to  undertake  it  ?  Touching  the 
first  of  these  points  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Ignorant  as  a  child 
of  all  metaphysical  speculation,  his  simple  theory  of  the  world 
was,  that  all  men  were  equally  devoid  of  merit  before  God, 
and  that  there  is  no  reason  by  possibility  to  be  alleged  why  we 
should  not  love  every  member  of  the  human  family.  This  is 
fully  contained  in  the  answer  which  he  gave,  after  having  been 
long  engaged  in  his  work,  to  one  expressing  his  surprise  at  his 
deep  love  and  pity  for  the  depraved  : — "  I  consider  that,  if  it 
had  not  been  for  divine  grace,  I  might  have  been  as  abandoned 
as  they  are."  In  this  sentence  is  contained, not  only  an  ample 
exposition  and  defense  of  Howard's  views  as  a  philanthropist, 
but  also  the  whole  philosophy  of  Christian  Philanthropy.  The 
subordinate  motives  which  urged  Howard  on  his  enterprise, 
and  supported  him  in  his  achievement,  are  easily  discoverable. 
It  is  certain  that  the  precise  position  into  which  he  was  brought 
by  the  death  of  his  wife  rendered  his  home  a  place  of  small 
comfort ;  his  own  words  expressly  testify  the  fact.  It  is  true, 
also,  that  he  had  traveled  much  during  his  life,  and  that  travel- 
ing was  by  no  means  disagreeable  to  him,  but  rather  the  re- 
verse. But  the  one  grand  motive  which  beyond  all  others 
impelled  him  to  his  work,  was  a  conviction  that  the  voice  of 
God  bade  him  go  forth  No  man  in  this  world  acts  on  a  single 
or  simple  motive,  and  persistent  courageous  work  extorts  the 
admiration  and  honor  of  men,  though  its  motive  is  not  of  the 


AND     THE     RISE     OF    P  II  I  L  A  N  T  II  R  O  P  r.  129 

noblest.  That  no  lower  motive  than  the  simple  approbation 
of  God  influenced  Howard,  m'C  can  not  assert ;  but  we  do  de- 
liberately think  that,  of  the  sons  of  men,  few,  or  perhaps  none, 
have  acted  more  purely  on  the  highest  motive.  "  Howard  is 
a  beautiful  philanthropist,  eulogized  by  Burke,  and,  in  most 
men's  minds,  a  sort  of  beatified  individual.  How  glorious, 
having  finished  off  one's  affairs  in  Bedfordshire,  or,  in  fact,  find- 
ing them  very  dull,  inane,  and  worthy  of  being  quitted  and  got 
away  from,  to  set  out  on  a  cruise  over  the  jails,  first  of  Britain, 
then,  finding  that  answer,  over  the  jails  of  the  habitable  globe ! 
*  A  voyage  of  discovery,  a  circumnavigation  of  charity ;  to 
collate  distresses,  to  gauge  wretchedness,  to  take  the  dimensions 
of  human  misery  :' — ^really,  it.  is  very  fine."  In  what  precise 
manner  these  words  are  intended  to  define  or  sarcastically 
point  at  Howard's  impulses  in  undertaking  his  work,  we  care 
not  positively  to  determine.  But  it  is  surely  fair  to  consider 
them  as  calculated  to  convey  an  impression,  that  in  choosing 
his  work  he  had  at  least  some  thought  of  the  "  glorious  "  aspect 
it  would  bear  in  the  eyes  of  men,  how  grand  it  would  look, 
and  how  much  men  would  talk  about  it.  Now  we  venture  to 
assert,  appealing  to  bare  and  unassailable  facts,  that  in  few  in- 
stances recorded  in  human  history,  perhaps  hardly  in  any,  could 
such  an  impression  be  more  profoundly  incorrect ;  that  How- 
ard's eye  was  closed,  as  scarce  ever  human  eye  was  closed,  to 
every  influence  within  the  atmosphere  of  earth ;  that  he  looked, 
with  a  silent  earnestness  whose  intensity  was  sublime,  for  his 
approbation  and  reward,  into  the  ey^  of  God.  In  this  highest 
of  all  regards  we  scruple  not  to  name  him  with  the  holiest  of 
men,  with  IMoscs,  Daniel,  and  John. 

Ill  answering  our  third  question.  How  did  he  perform  his 
work,  which  must  be  done  at  somewhat  greater  length,  light  is 
ca.st  on  the  former  two.     We  come  to  look  at  Howard  in  his 
6* 


130  HOWARD; 

actual  operations.  To  detail  his  several  journeys  in  Great 
Britain  and  on  the  Continent,  is  indeed  impossible  here ;  nor  is 
the  attempt  in  any  respect  called  for ;  the  main  outlines  of  his 
work  can  be  sketched,  and  its  general  spirit  displayed,  in  a  few 
comprehensive  glances. 

About  the  close  of  the  year  1773,  there  might  have  been 
seen,  on  the  high-roads  of  the  comities  adjoining  to  Bedford,  a 
gentleman  on  horseback,  followed  by  his  servant,  traveling,  at 
the  rate  of  forty  miles  a-day.  At  every  town  where  he  rested, 
he  visited  the  jail.  There  was  no  fuss  or  hurry  in  his  motions, 
he  never  lost  a  moment,  he  never  gave  a  moment  too  little  to 
the  business  in  hand,  nothing  escaped  his  eye,  and  there  was  no 
spot  into  which  he  did  not  penetrate.  He  went  into  places 
where  the  noisome  and  pestilential  air  compelled  him  to  draw 
his  breath  short,  where  deadly  contagion  lurked,  where  phy- 
sicians refused  to  follow  him  ;  unagitated  yet  earnest,  he  meas- 
ured every  dungeon,  explored  every  particular  respecting  fare, 
accommodation,  and  fees,  inquired  after  the  prevalence  of  dis- 
ease, with  the  means  adopted  for  its  prevention,  and  learned 
in  every  instance  the  relation  which  the  criminals  held  to  those 
who  superintended  and  kept  the  jail.  He  rested  not  until  he 
had  gone  east  and  west,  until  he  had  carried  his  researches 
over  the  jails  of  Britain  and  of  Europe,  until  he  could  credibly 
declare  what  was  the  state  of  the  prisons  of  the  world.  That 
gentleman  was  John  Howard.  Was  the  scene  which  discov- 
ered itself  to  his  eye  such  as  confirms  the  idea  that  the  time 
had  arrived  when  an  offense  against  God  and  man  was  no 
longer  to  be  endured,  and  rays  of  light,  as  just  as  beneficent, 
to  be  cast  into  dungeons  that  had  long  been  seen  only  by 
Heaven  1 

A  few  simple  facts,  illustrative  likewise  of  Howard's  mode 
of  working,  shall,  be  our  reply. 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     P  H  I  L  A  N  T  II  II  0  T  Y.  131 

He  saw  prevailing  far  and  wide  in  England,  that  palpable 
and  cruel  injustice  which  first  set  him  on  his  journeying  ;  men 
declared  guiltless  were  still  laid  in  the  dungeon.  He  found 
that  in  the  same  land  it  was  possible  for  one  whose  neighbor 
owed  him  a  paltry  sum,  to  deprive  that  neighbor  of  his  lib- 
erty, and  subject  himself  and  his  family  to  every  thing  short  of 
absolute  starvation :  nay,  to  starvation  itself,  if  it  was  spread 
over  months  instead  of  days.  He  found  still  under  the  kindly 
skies  of  that  free,  enlightened,  and  religious  country,  that  it 
was  possible  for  men  to  be  farmed  by  a  fellow-man,  and  fed 
from  such  a  miserable  pittance  of  money,  that  they  must  have 
suffered  the  perpetual  gnawings  of  hunger.  He  found  dens  or 
holes  under  ground,  of  dimensions  such  as  might  have  held 
one  wild  animal,  where  several  human  beings  were  flung,  to 
gasp  and  groan  the  night  long.  In  some,  the  heat  and  close- 
ness must  have  been  stifling,  in  some,  the  floors  were  wet  and 
the  walls  dripping,  in  some,  open  and  reeking  sewers  poisoned 
the  air ;  all  that  is  noisome  and  revolting  in  gross  uncleanness 
lay  bare  to  his  sickened  but  unflinching  gaze.  Death,  he  dis- 
covered, had  here  a  realm  of  his  own,  where  he  escaped  the  eye 
of  justice  and  humanity.  From  time  immemorial,  uncured  and 
uncared  for,  a  virulent  fever  dwelt  in  those  dreary  abodes ; 
it  had  a  character  of  its  own ;  it  was  the  progeny  and  it  seemed 
the  genius  of  the  place ;  it  was  called  the  jail-fever.  There,  in 
darkness,  famine,  and  loathsome  horrors,  it  preyed  on  those 
victims  who  were  handed  over  to  it,  and  whose  life-strength 
was  broken  by  shame,  sorrow,  and  despair ;  like  a  foul,  and 
cruel,  and  insatiable  vulture,  which  men  permitted  to  tear  out 
the  hearts  of  their  brethren,  chained  in  the  depths  of  dungeons. 
Year  by  year,  its  victims  were  counted  by  the  score  and  the 
hundred ;  many  of  these  mere  debtors,  and  few  of  them  proved 
guilty ;  a  grave  and  notable  fact,  slight  it  who  will,  if  nations 


132  HOWARD  ; 

are  answerable  to  God  for  the  blood  they  ched !  Nc  r  was  the 
jail-fever  alone ;  the  small-pox  raged  fiercely,  and  the  malignity 
of  every  other  form  of  disease  was  heightened ;  the  want  of  air, 
the  damp  vapors,  the  insufficient  food,  and  other  causes,  too 
many  to  recount,  exaggerated  every  tendency  to  consumption, 
rheumatism,  palsy,  and  other  nameless  ailments.  He  found 
that  not  only  the  body  was  delivered  over,  bound  hand  and 
foot,  to  pestilence  and  famine,  but  that  every  soul  which  entered 
those  dens  seemed  actually  handed  over  to  the  evil  power.  All 
the  maladies  which  can  infect  the  mind  still  partially  pure,  when 
villainy  recounts  and  gloats  over  its  crimes,  finding  its  only 
recreation  in  the  exercise,  spread  their  contagion  there ;  while 
drinking,  swearing,  gambling,  and  indecency,  were  the  appro- 
priate accompaniments  and  aids  in  the  work.  The  jail-fever 
was  not  the  worst  enemy  men  encountered  in  a  prison. 

The  cases  of  individual  woe  which  Howard  saw,  may  be  im- 
agined, but  can  not  be  detailed ;  they  were  such  as  might  have 
wrung  forth  tears  of  blood :  pale  and  haggard  faces  on  which 
the  light  had  not  looked  until  its  glare  pained  the  glazed  and 
hollow  eye,  spirits  broken,  hearts  hopeless,  ghastly  beings  who 
had,  long  years  ago,  left  all  the  paths  where  comfort  encour- 
ages, and  better  prospects  smile,  however  faintly,  in  the  dis- 
tance, and  who  now  stood  fronting  mankind  with  demoniac 
scowl,  in  the  gaunt  defiance  of  despair ;  men  who,  for  small 
debts,  after  long  years  died  in  prison,  fathers  sustained  in  their 
dreary  confinement  by  the  families  whose  main  support  they 
had  hitherto  been,  and  several  of  whose  younger  members 
dropped  at  the  time  significantly  into  the  grave,  women  lying 
desolate,  far  from  every  friendly  eye,  from  every  cheering  word, 
and  dying  of  incurable  disease ;  brother  mortals  driven  mad  by 
anguish,  whose  cries  attracted  the  passer-by.  Such  were  the 
sights  which,  in  the  course  of  his  various  journeys  over  Eng- 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  133 

land  and  the  world,  John  Howard  saw.  Had  the  time  come 
for  philanthropy  ? 

Howard  had  not  long  been  engaged  in  his  work,  ere  the  re- 
port of  it  reached  the  House  of  Commons.  The  House  had  been 
lately  concerning  itself  with  such  things,  and  Howard  w^as 
called  to  give  evidence  regarding  what  he  had  seen.  His  an- 
swers were  deemed  clear  and  satisfactory,  and  he  formally  re- 
ceived the  thanks  of  the  House.  One  honorable  member,  how- 
ever, hearing  of  his  long  and  expensive  circuits,  and  finding  the 
idea  new  to  him  that  such  things  should  be  done  without  cash 
payment,  begged  to  be  informed  whether  he  had  traveled  at 
his  own  expense.  The  man  to  whom  he  put  the  question  was 
no  sentimentalist,  but  that  question  touched  him  in  his  very 
heart ;  indignation,  and  contempt,  and  the  tears  of  outraged 
modesty,  seem  to  have  blended  with  scorn,  as  he  spurned  the 
unconscious  compliment  of  Mammon. 

In  the  course  of  the  year  1774,  two  bills  were  passed :  one 
abolished  the  injustice  relating  to  the  fees,  the  other  had  refer- 
ence to  the  health  of  prisoners.  Howard  said  nothing,  but,  in 
his  own  way,  had  them  both  printed  at  his  expense,  and  sent 
one  to  every  jailer  in  the  kingdom. 

About  the  close  of  the  same  year  he  was  requested  to  stand 
candidate  for  the  borough  of  Bedford.  He  acceded  to  the  re- 
quest, and  very  narrowly  missed  his  seat.  He  imputed  his 
failure  to  government  influence ;  and,  however  this  may  have 
been,  we  learn  from  his  words  on  the  occasion,  that  he  was  by 
no  means  a  man  who  concerned  himself  alone  with  village 
politics,  or  slavishly  pursued  one  idea.  He  had  cast  his  eyes 
on  the  awakening  motions  of  the  great  western  giant,  and 
boldly  avowed  his  opposition  to  part  of  the  policy  adopted 
toward  America.  He  also  openly  and  emphatically  declared 
that,  if  elected,  he  would  never  accept  of  five  slnllings  of 


134  HOWARD  ; 

emolument.  lie  felt  the  loss  of  his  seat  somewhat  deeply,  but-, 
as  usual,  resigned  himself  with  perfect  calmness  to  the  disposal 
of  Providence. 

Meanwhile,  hh  peculiar  work  had  not  been  abandoned.  In 
no  degree  agitated  by  the  result  of  the  election,  he  set  out  for 
Scotland  and  Ireland,  and  prosecuted  still  further  his  re- 
searches in  England.  He  was  just  a  month  at  home  about  the 
election  business ;  in  noting  his  method  of  going  about  his 
work  here,  one  hardly  sees  wherein  his  "  energy"  was  specially 
"slow." 

Having  looked  with  his  own  eyes  into  the  prisons  of  Eng- 
land, Scotland,  and  Ireland,  he  sat  down,  in  the  beginning  of 
1775,  in  his  house  at  Cardington,  to  arrange  his  materials  for 
the  press,  and  offer  to  the  world  such  suggestions  as  he  now 
felt  himself  in  a  position  to  give.  But  a  thought  struck  him. 
There  were  other  prisons  in  the  world  besides  those  of  Britain ; 
on  the  Continent  of  Europe  might  not  new  miseries  be  seen, 
and  might  not  valuable  hints  be  obtained?  The  fact  was 
palpable ;  but  then  it  delayed  the  work,  and  was  so  tedious. 
Howard  calmly  laid  aside  his  papers,  got  ready  his  traveling 
gear,  and  set  out  for  the  Continent.  There  was  "  slow"  energy 
here ;  and  of  a  particularly  valuable  sort. 

Howard's  first  journey  in  the  inspection  of  Continental  pris- 
ons lay  through  France,  Holland,  part  of  Flanders,  Germany, 
and  Switzerland.  His  researches  were  conducted  in  his  usual 
way — quietly,  quickly,  thoroughly ;  his  sense  of  justice  mark- 
ing every  abuse,  his  sagacity  noting  every  excellence.  He  did 
not  travel  so  flir  without  seeing  misery,  and  here  again  comfort 
and  hope  went  along  with  him  into  many  a  weary  dungeon ; 
but  the  general  glance  at  Continental  prisons  afforded  revela- 
tions which  redounded  to  the  unquestionable  honor  of  the  Con- 
tinent, and  the  shame  of  Britain.     It  is  true  that  he  did  not 


ANT     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  135 

gain  access  to  the  severest  form  of  confinement  in  France ; 
his  daring  attempt  to  enter  the  Bastile  was  foiled ;  it  is  true, 
likewise,  that  he  did  discover  traces  of  torture  such  as  was  not 
known  in  England.  But,  in  cleanliness,  order,  and  the  general 
characteristic  of  being  cared  for,  the  Continental  jails  had  the 
clear  superiority.  In  Holland,  at  that  time,  to  all  appearance, 
the  most  orderly  and  internally  prosperous  kingdom  of  Eu 
rope,  he  saw  in  operation  a  system  of  management  of  crimi- 
nals, in  its  main  outlines,  wise  and  humane.  And  the  jail-fever 
existed  only  in  Britain  ! 

On  returning  from  the  Continent,  he  applied  himself  to  the 
publication  of  his  work  on  Prisons.  His  friends  Aiken  and 
Price  assisted  him  in  arranging  his  matter  and  securing  literary 
correctness.  The  book  was  printed  at  Warrington.  It  was 
severe  winter  weather,  yet  Howard  was  always  up  by  two  in 
the  morning,  revising  proof-sheets ;  at  eight,  he  was  at  the 
printing-office,  having  just  dressed  for  the  day  and  breakflisted ; 
here  he  remained  till  one,  when  the  men  went  to  dimier ;  he 
then  retired  to  his  adjoining  lodgings,  and  taking  in  his  hand 
some  bread  and  raisins,  or  other  dried  fruit,  generally  walked 
for  a  little  in  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  calling  probably  on  a 
friend.  The  printers  by  this  time  had  returned,  and  proceed- 
ing to  the  printing-office,  he  continued  there  until  work  was 
over.  Still  untired,  ho  went  then  to  look  over  with  Aiken  the 
sheets  put  together  by  the  latter  during  the  day.  His  supper 
consisted  of  a  cup  of  tea  or  coffee,  and  he  retired  to  rest  at 
ten  or  half-past  ten. 

The  book  published  by  Howard  requires  no  comment.  It 
is  a  type  of  his  work  ;  accurate,  substantial,  valuable,  but  de- 
void of  every  thing  allied,  even  most  distantly,  to  adornment. 
It  is  rather  a  book  of  statistics  than  any  thing  else,  and  as 
such  there  can  be  no  doubt  it  was  mainly  regarded  by  him- 


136  HOWARD  ; 

self;  the  facts  of  the  case  were  wanted,  and  these  he  gave.  It 
was  published  in  1777,  and  additions  were  made,  at  several 
subseo[iient  periods. 

In  the  course  of  the  same  year,  by  the  death  of  his  sister, 
he  inherited  £15,000.  This  addition  to  the  means  at  his  com- 
mand he  resolved  to  devote  entirely  to  the  prosecution  of  that 
task  which  he  believed  to  have  been  appomted  him  by  God. 
He  knew  his  son  to  be  amply  provided  for,  even  though  his 
patrimonial  estate  was  encroached  upon ;  but  this  enabled  him 
to  leave  that  estate  untouched.  Howard  did  his  work  not 
merely  without  cash  payment ;  he  devoted  to  it  every  farthing 
he  could  conscientiously  expend. 

For  several  years  now  his  course  does  not  demand  a  detailed 
account.  He  went  on  calmly  and  indefatigably,  ever  widening 
the  range  of  his  excursions,  and  ever  rendering  more  perfect 
what  he  had  already  done.  Again  and  again,  he  visited  the 
prisons  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland ;  again  and  again,  he 
swept  over  the  Continent,  the  speed  of  his  journeys  equaled 
only  by  the  thoroughness  of  his  work.  He  had  in  every  re- 
spect attained  perfect  adaptation  to  this  last.  By  long  and 
vigorous  temperance,  entire  abstinence  from  animal  food  and 
intoxicating  liquors,  and  a  constant  use  of  the  bath,  his  early 
weakness  of  frame  seems  to  have  been  exchanged  for  a  consid- 
erable hardiness;  he  inured  himself  to  do  without  sleep  to 
such  an  extent,  that,  on  his  journeys,  one  night  in  three,  and 
that  taken  sometimes  in  his  carriage,  sufficed ;  so  perfectly  sim- 
ple was  his  fare,  that  he  could,  without  boasting,  profess  him 
self  able  to  subsist  wherever  men  were  to  be  found,  where ve^ 
the  earth  yielded  bread  and  water.  The  tourist  in  the  High- 
lands of  Scotland  might  have  seen  him  stopping  at  the  cabin  by 
the  wayside  to  obtain  a  little  millc ;  among  the  mountains  of 
Sweden  he  pushed  on,  undaunted  and  tireless,  living  on  sour 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  137 

bread  and  sour  milk ;  on  the  bleak  plains  of  Russia,  his  lean 
and  somewhat  sallow  face,  and  small  spare  figure,  might  have 
been  marked  as  he  dashed  past  in  his  light  carriage ;  he  was 
on  the  high  roads  of  France,  in  the  mountain  gorges  of  Switz- 
erland, tossing  on  the  Mediterranean  or  the  Adriatic.  Never 
did  he  tarry,  never  did  he  haste,  never  w^as  he  moved  from  his 
ieliberate  and  wakeful  calmness.  No  personal  duty  was  ne- 
lected.  His  son  he  always  carefully  remembered,  having  him 
near  him  at  all  needful  and  proper  seasons,  and  diligently  in- 
quiring after  the  best  instructors  and  guardians,  to  whose  care 
to  commit  him.  The  little  cottages  of  Cardington  were  not 
forgotten.  These  grew  ever  more  numerous,  and  their  inmates 
were  well  remembered ;  the  work  of  alleviating  the  sorrow 
of  the  world  did  not  prevent  the  little  drops  of  comfort,  which 
had  gladdened  them  while  their  kind  landlord  dwelt  beside, 
from  falling  within  them  still.  And  wherever  Howard  was,  it 
was  impossible  for  men  not  to  discern  wherein  lay  the  secret 
of  his  indefatigable  perseverance,  his  unwavering  valor,  his 
perpetual  calm.  In  whatever  land  he  was,  and  amid  what  ob- 
servers soever,  he  never  forgot  or  hesitated  to  join  in  evening 
prayer  with  his  attendant ;  the  door  was  shut,  and  the  master 
and  servant  knelt  down  together  as  if  at  home  in  quiet  Car- 
dington. For  his  own  exertions,  his  one  reason  was,  that  he 
believed  himself  doing  the  will  of  God ;  for  the  disposal  of 
all  events  he  trusted,  with  the  simplicity  of  a  little  child,  and 
the  faith  of  a  Hebrew  patriarch,  to  the  immediate  power  of 
Jehovah.  He  passes  by  contending  armies ;  we  mark  a  shud- 
der going  over  his  frame,  but  we  see  him  also  lift  his  eye  up- 
ward, and  comfort  himself  with  the  knowledge  that  God  is 
sitting  King  over  the  floods :  he  enters  dungeons  where  others 
shrink  back  from  the  tainted  air;  duty,  he  says,  has  sent  him 
there,  and  Providence  can  preserve  him :  ho  is  cast  on  a  bed 


138  HOWARD  ; 

of  pain  and  languor ;  he  bows  submission  to  the  chastening 
hand  of  his  Father,  or  bends  his  head,  and  asks  wherefore  He 
co'ntendeth  with  him.  Men  look  upon  him  with  various  feel- 
ings. The  cold,  the  hard,  the  cruel,  scorn  the  whole  enterprise ; 
the  worshipers  of  Mammon  look  on  amazed,  scarce  finding 
heart  to  sneer ;  gradually,  from  all  lands,  there  begins  to  rise 
a  sound  of  approbation  and  acclaim.  Howard  hears  neithe^ 
sneers  nor  acclamations :  he  listens  for  the  voice  which  seem 
to  the  world  to  be  altogether  silent. 

As  our  eye  follows  him  during  these  years,  it  is  impossible 
not  to  discern  a  remarkable  dexterity  and  adroitness  in  carry- 
ing through  whatever  business  presents  itself — a  quick  percep- 
tion of  what  the  case  demands — a  sure  sagacity  in  providing 
against  it — a  certain  ready  adaptation  to  circumstances,  and 
swift  assumption  of  the  character  necessary  for  the  occasion  ; 
all  which  it  really  seems  difficult  to  reconcile  with  dullness. 
Let  us  briefly  make  good  our  words. 

Look  at  him,  for  instance,  in  that  visit  to  Russia,  in  which 
he  excited  the  interest,  and  was  invited  to  the  court  of  Catha- 
rine. 

Unbroken  by  the  toils  and  hardships  undergone  in  Sweden, 
where  not  even  tolerable  milk  could  be  obtained  to  put  into 
his  unfailing  tea,  he  arrives  in  the  neighborhood  of  St.  Peters- 
burg. Forgetful  of  nothing,  and  conscious  that  his  fame  now 
goes  before  him,  and  is  apt  to  interfere  with  his  work,  he  leaves 
his  carriage  in  the  neighborhood,  and  enters  the  town  privately. 
The  empress,  however,  has  marked  him,  and  sends  a  messen 
ger  to  invite  him  to  the  palace.  Here  is  clearly  a  call  to  the 
highest  distinction  and  applause,  to  become  the  observed  of  all 
observers,  in  the  smile  of  one  whose  smile  secures  that  of  all 
others  :  if  there  is  observable  weakness,  even  pardonable  weak 
ness,  in  his  nature,  if  the  appearance  of  his  work,  in  the  eyes 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  139 

of  men,  does  sensibly  afTcct  him,  here  is  a  case  for  the  quiet 
gratification  of  the  hidden  feeling,  without  the  likelihood,  nay, 
the  possibility,  of  its  ever  being  called  in  question.  There  are 
positive  arguments,  too,  which  seem  plausible  enough.  The 
empress  may  be  won  to  a  special  interest  in  prisons,  philan- 
thropy may  kindle  itself  in  the  court,  what  unconceived  good 
may  shape  itself  out  therefrom  is  not  to  be  measured.  Howard 
looks  at  the  invitation  with  his  cool,  piercing  English  eye, 
flashing  at  once  through  all  plausibilities  into  the  heart  of  the 
matter ;  he  feels  instinctively  that  his  work  is  in  the  dungeon, 
and  not  the  palace,  and  that  to  encircle  it  with  a  blaze  of  pub 
licity  will  probably  interfere  with  the  positive  rugged  task  he 
has  appointed  himself:  he  refuses  the  invitation. 

Once  in  St.  Petersburg,  he  is  soon  at  his  work. 

He  has  heard  very  much  of  the  humanity  of  the  Russian 
criminal  arrangements,  and  for  one  thing,  it  has  been  boasted 
to  him  that  capital  punishment  is  here  abolished.  His  strong 
instinctive  sagacity  doubts  the  fact.  But  how  attain  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  truth  ?  All  authorities  simply  give  the  bland  as- 
surance that  it  is  so  ;  the  published  codes  bear  witness  to  the 
same ;  how  can  one  get  past  what  is  said  and  seen,  to  be  as- 
sured there  is  no  discordance  between  that  and  the  actual  inner 
fact  ?  Howard  hires  a  hackney  coach,  and  drives  to  the  house 
of  the  man  who  inflicts  the  knout.  This  first  precaution  is 
necessary  to  remove  all  appearance  of  being  a  stranger.  He 
enters  quickly,  wearing  a  purpose-like,  business-like  look,  as  of 
one  who  is  in  the  simple  discharge  of  his  duty.  The  man  eye 
him  with  astonishment,  and  somewhat  of  fear.  Howard  ad- 
dresses him,  soothingly  but  firmly ;  no  evil  is  intended  toward 
him,  he  has  but  to  answer,  clearly  and  at  once,  the  questions 
about  U  be  put.  Howard's  look  is  cool  and  adroit ;  the 
Russian  is  all  submission  and  complaisance :  the  colloquy  com- 


1 40  HOWARD; 

mences  : — "  Can  you  inflict  the  knout  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
occasion  death  in  a  short  timef — "Yes,  I  can." — "In  how- 
short  a  time  ?" — "  In  a  day  or  two." — "  Have  you  ever  so  in- 
flicted it  r'— "  I  have."—"  Have  you  lately  f '— "  Yes ;  the  last 
man  who  was  punished  with  my  hands  by  the  knout  died  of 
the  punishment. " — "  In  what  manner  do  you  thus  render  it 
mortal  f — "  By  one  or  more  strokes  on  the  sides,  which  carry 
oflT  large  pieces  of  flesh." — "  Do  you  receive  orders  thus  to  in- 
flict the  punishment  ?" — "  I  do."  The  brief,  soldier-like  inquiry 
is  completed ;  not  a  point  has  been  omitted ;  Howard  is  satis- 
fied, and  departs.  The  elaborate  cloaking  of  Russian  policy, 
the  infernal  cruelty  masked  under  the  diabolic  smile,  has  been 
penetrated  by  the  simple,  plain-looking  Englishman,  now  ap- 
proaching his  sixtieth  year. 

While  prosecuting  his  researches  in  St.  Petersburg,  over- 
come by  his  exertions  in  Sweden,  and  affected  probably  by  the 
climate,  Howard  is  seized  with  the  ague.  He  has  no  time  to 
spare ;  his  work  waits  at  Moscow ;  he  procures  a  light  car- 
riage, and  sets  out.  The  ague  is  still  on  him,  but  his  strong 
spirit  shakes  it  away  ;  he  travels  it  off*.  The  journey  to  Mos- 
cow is  five  hundred  miles  ;  in  less  than  five  days  he  is  there, 
his  clothes  having  never  been  oflT  since  starting.  He  enters 
Moscow  as  calmly  as  if  returning  from  a  drive  in  the  suburbs, 
and  is  instantly  at  work.  Such  is  the  old  man's  way — "  the 
dull,  solid  Howard." 

Consider,  again,  that  tour  in  France,  when  he  was  forbidden 
to  pass  the  frontiers.  The  interdict  is  strict.  He  has  seriously 
oflTended  the  French  Court  by  plain  truths,  and  researches  not 
to  be  balked.  He  ponders  the  circumstances  with  his  usual 
calmness ;  duty  seems  to  speak  clearly ;  he  resolves  to  enter 
France.  He  assumes  the  disguise  of  a  physician — having  form- 
erly acquired  some  knowledge  of  medicine — adroitly  escapes 


AND  THE  RISE  OF  PHILANTHROPY.        141 

arrest  in  Paris,  and  on  the  streets  of  Toulon  foots  it  trippingly 
as  a  French  exquisite.  He  attains  his  object,  and  leaves  France 
by  sea.  In  the  flice  of  the  French  Government  he  has  crossed 
the  country,  and  made  what  observations  seemed  to  him  good. 
Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  achievement,  it  surely  does  not 
look  like  that  of  the  mere  shiftless  mechanical  workman. 

In  more  private  instances,  the  case  was  similar.  He  visits 
the  Justitia  hulk.  The  captain  brings  him  a  biscuit  as  sample 
of  the  provisions  ;  it  is  as  wholesome  as  could  be  wished.  How- 
ard puts  it  in  his  pocket.  All  necessary  information  seems  to 
have  been  obtained,  yet  he  lingers ;  there  is  one  on  board  who 
wishes  he  would  take  himself  off.  He  has,  in  factj  been  mak- 
ing observations  in  his  own  way ;  his  eyes  are  open  as  well  as 
his  ears.  He  remarks  that  things  have  a  tawdry,  disordered 
look,  that  the  prisoners  are  sickly  and  tattered,  that  there  are 
several  things  here  which  the  captain's  relation,  so  frankly  given, 
by  no  means  embraces.  Accordingly  he  waits.  At  length  the 
messes  are  weighed  out,  Howard  looking  on  quite  calm,  but 
with  something  of  expectation  in  his  face.  Here  come  the  bis- 
cuits ;  they  are  in  broken  bits,  green  and  moldy ;  there  is  no 
longer  any  mystery  in  the  pallid  looks  of  the  crew.  It  is  now 
Howard's  turn  to  speak.  Out  comes  the  wholesome  satisfac- 
tory biscuit,  it  is  held  up  before  captain  and  crew,  beside  the 
green  loathsome  fragments,  and  Howard  indignantly  rebukes 
the  former  for  his  cruelty  and  falsehood.  We  can  conceive  the 
brightening  of  the  eyes  of  the  crew  as  they  stand  by  in  amaze- 
ment. If  you  say  Howard  was  slow  and  heavy,  it  might  be 
well  to  mention  how  he  could  have  done  his  work  better  :  if  it 
appears  that  he  was  a  quick,  indeflitigable,  effective  worker,  it 
might  be  well,  we  say  once  more,  to  consider  to  what  extent 
biographic  vails  of  dust  and  cobwebs  may  hide  the  clear,  strong 
lines  in  the  face  of  a  man. 


142  HOWARD  ; 

We  do  not  assert  that  Howard  was  a  man  of  very  remark- 
able intellectual  power.  That  in  every  mental  exertion  con- 
nected with  words,  that  in  every  thing  relating  to  expression  of 
thought  or  narration  of  action  he  was  naturally  devoid  of  un- 
common, perhaps  even  of  ordinary,  faculty,  we  at  once  concede  : 
the  only  question  which  admits  of  discussion  is,  whether,  in 
that  power  of  action,  that  faculty  of  perceiving  and  doing  the 
thing  needful,  with  closed  or  stuttering  lips,  which  has  been 
recognized  as  characteristically  English,  he  was  not  so  far  su- 
perior to  the  common  run  of  men  that  his  title  can  be  vindi- 
cated  to  a  really  remarkable  endowment ;  whether,  with  what 
difference  soever,  he  was  not  cut  from  that  same  hard  stratum 
of  the  Erzgebirge  rock  from  which  have  come  the  silent  Saxon 
Clives  and  Wellingtons.  He  himself  estimated  his  powers 
very  low.  "  I  am  the  plodder,"  he  said,  ^'  who  goes  about  to 
collect  material  for  men  of  genius  to  make  use  of."  And  cer- 
tainly the  special  honor  we  claim  for  Howard  is  not  intellect- 
ual. "  How  often,"  to  use  again  his  own  humble  words,  "  have 
we  seen  that  important  events  have  arisen  from  weak  instru- 
ments;" perhaps,  for  once,  it  was  right  in  the  human  race  to 
set  among  its  honored  and  immortal  heroes  one  whose  highest 
glory  was  his  humility,  whose  greatest  strength  was  his  weak- 
ness. Yet  we  must  think  it  were  a  difficult  thing  to  prove  that 
he  did  not  possess  a  high  talent  of  the  working  order.  Thur- 
low  was  very  much  struck  with  the  sagacity  he  displayed  in 
an  interview  he  had  with  him ;  when  clearly  set  before  the  eye 
as  they  were  done,  and  not  as  they  have  been  narrated,  his 
actions  do  not  wear  any  aspect  of  slowness,  dullness,  or  mere 
mechanical  gyration ;  the  work  he  had  to  do  required  not  high 
intellectual  power,  but  what  it  did  require  he  fully  displayed. 
Once  only  does  he  seem  to  have  failed,  or  at  least  to  have 
abandoned  an  attempt  ere  effecting  the  work  proposed ;  he  was 


AND     THE     RIBE     OF     nilLANTIIROPY.  143 

appointed  supervisor  of  certain  penitentiary  establishments 
which  were  to  be  erected,  and  after  a  time  resigned  the  post. 
But  here  he  was  at  once  hampered  by  interference,  and  re- 
strained from  the  work  which  he  deemed  specially  his  own  ; 
perhaps  resignation  was  the  most  decided,  manly,  and  appro- 
priate course  open  in  the  circumstances.  What  Howard  might 
have  been  in  action,  had  he,  in  early  life,  been  placed  in  a  sit- 
uation to  exercise  an  important  influence  on  his  fellow-men,  wo 
need  not  inquire ;  yet  we  must  urge  the  question,  whether,  con- 
sidering the  long-sustained  activity,  the  inevitable  observation, 
the  iron  decision,  the  quick  adroitness,  which  a  survey  of  his 
career  displays,  it  is  really  a  safe  assertion  that  he  possessed 
by  nature  no  power  of  work,  define  it  as  you  will,  which  made 
him  remarkable  among  men,  and  would  have  secured  him 
credit,  if  not  fame,  in  whatever  situation  he  had  been  placed. 

Howard's  two  last  journeys  to  the  continent  claim  a  more 
particular  notice  than  the  others.  We  must,  however,  still  be 
brief. 

When  he  had  been  long  engaged  in  the  work  of  investigat- 
ing the  state  of  prisons,  and  that  task  had  been  approximately 
accomplished  all  over  Europe,  it  became  apparent  to  him  that 
yet  another  service  was  appointed  him.  He  had  looked  upon 
one  great  portion  of  the  human  race,  which  most  men  forget 
and  despise  as  having  no  claim  upon  them  ;  he  now  turned  to 
look  upon  another,  whose  claim  upon  their  brethren  is  also 
negative  rather  than  positive,  who  are  held  to  their  hearts 
solely  by  the  claims  of  pity ; — the  sick  and  diseased  of  the  hu- 
man family.  This  other  great  dumb  class  was  to  find  an  ad- 
vocate in  Howard ;  he  aspired  to  perform  the  twofold  angelic 
office  of  bringing  hope  to  the  prisoner,  and  healing  to  the 
sick. 

About  this  time,  menacing  Europe  from  the  East,  lying 


144  HOWARD  ; 

along  its  borders  like  the  purple  cloud  which  wraps  the  Samiel, 
the  destroying  pestilence,  named  by  distinction  the  Plague, 
seems  to  have  attracted  special  attention.  That  slight  and 
sallow  man,  who  had  struggled,  his  life  long,  with  sickness, 
whose  face  was  as  that  of  a  hermit  in  a  wilderness,  who  was 
slow  of  speech,  and  upon  whose  head  had  now  fallen  the  snows 
of  nearly  threescore  winters,  marked  that  Samiel-cloud  from 
afar.  He  saw  it  coming  slowly,  resistlessly  on,  strewing  it 
way  with  pallid  corpses,  taking  the  smile  from  off  the  faces  of 
the  nations.  He  thought  it  possible  that,  by  entering  its  shade 
he  might  learn  the  secret  of  its  baneful  energy,  and  save  some 
of  his  fellow-creatures  from  its  power.  He  thought  he  heard 
the  voice  of  his  God  bidding  him  go ;  he  looked  calmly  from 
his  quiet  island  home  toward  Asia  and  the  ^gean,  and  went. 
Other  diseases  were  to  meet  him  on  the  way,  the  lazar-houses 
of  Europe  were  embraced  in  his  enterprise,  but  the  great 
Plague,  like  the  monarch  of  the  baleful  host,  was  the  ultimate, 
and  gradually  the  principal  foe  with  which  the  weak  John  How- 
ard was  to  contend. 

Passing  over  the  previous  stages  of  his  journey,  we  find  him, 
in  the  summer  of  1786,  in  Constantinople.  Here  he  visited 
the  hospitals  and  lazarettos,  every  den  and  stronghold  of  the 
plague  ;  as  he  entered,  a  pain  smote  him  across  the  forehead, 
continuing  for  an  hour  after  he  left ;  his  conductors  drew  back 
in  fear,  he  saw  what  was  oppressing  to  soul  and  sense ;  yet  he 
never  flinched,  never  abandoned  that  calm,  heaven-lit  look, 
which  nought  on  earth  could  darken  or  abash,  never  stopped 
till  his  task  was  done. 

This  once  accomplished,  he  prepared  to  return  to  Vienna. 
But  he  paused  ;  a  thought  had  struck  him — he  could  not  pro- 
ceed. The  prison-world  he  had  entered  solely  as  a  visitor ;  in 
no  other  capacity  was  there  a  possibility  of  domg  so.    But  was 


AND    THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  145 

not  the  case  altered  here  ?  Was  there  not  a  way  of  learning 
the  secrets  of  lazarettos  more  thorough  than  that  of  mere  in- 
spection and  hearsay  ?  There  was,  and  Howard  saw  it.  Yet 
the  condition  was  stern.  It  was,  that  he  should  enter  a  lazaret- 
to, and,  confined  himself,  learn,  beyond  possibility  of  deception, 
the  state  and  feelings  of  its  inmates.  The  old  man  deliberately 
accepted  the  condition,  and  proceeded  to  enter  a  lazaretto. 
From  Constantinople  he  sailed  for  Smyrna,  chose  there  a  ves- 
sel with  a  foul  bill  of  health,  and  departed  for  Venice.  On 
leaving  the  Morea,  where  the  vessel  took  in  water,  they  were 
borne  down  upon  by  a  Tunisian  pirate,  and  a  fight  ensued.  To 
the  astonishment  of  the  crew,  Howard  stood  by  perfectly  calm 
At  length  the  pirate  seemed  about  to  prevail.  As  a  last  resort, 
the  Turks  loaded  their  largest  cannon  to  the  muzzle  with  nails, 
spikes,  and  what  destructive  missiles  could  be  found.  Howard 
stepped  forward,  seeing,  probably,  that  the  men  mismanaged 
the  matter,  and  coolly  pointed  the  gun  on  the  enemy's  deck ; 
the  volley  burst  out,  carrying  death  among  their  crew,  and,  as 
the  smoke  rolled  along  the  sea,  the  pirate  was  seen  hoisting 
sail,  and  bearing  away.  The  voyage  proved  long  and  stormy. 
For  two  months  Howard  was  tossed  about,  alone  in  wild,  dan- 
gerous weather ;  yet  he  bore  a  brave  heart  through  it  all : — 
"  I  well  remember,"  he  says,  "  I  had  a  good  night,  when,  one 
evening,  my  cabin-biscuits,  &c.,  were  floated  with  water  ;  and 
thinking  I  should  be  some  hours  in  drying  it  up,  I  went  to  bed 
to  forget  it." 

Arriving  at  Venice,  he  found  he  had  to  spend  two  months  in 
the  lazaretto.  He  was  first  put  into  a  loathsome  room, 
"without  table,  chair,  or  bed,"  and  swarming  with  vermin. 
He  hired  a  person  to  cleanse  it,  and  the  operation  occupied  two 
days,  yet  it  remained  offensive ;  headache,  caused  by  the  tainted 
air  and  infected  walls,  perpetually  tormented  him.     From  his 

7 


146  HOWARD  ; 

first  apartment  he  was,  after  some  time,  removed  to  another 
as  bad  as  the  former.  Here,  in  the  divisior  of  the  apartment 
where  he  was  to  sleep,  he  was  "  almost  surrounded  with  water, ''' 
and  found  a  dry  spot  on  which  to  fix  his  bed  only  by  kindling 
a  large  fire  on  the  flags.  Six  days  he  remained  in  the  new 
quarter.  Once  more  he  was  removed,  and  this  time  there  ap- 
peared a  possibility  of  improvement.  His  new  apartment  was 
indeed  unfurnished,  filthy,  and  "  as  offensive  as  the  sick  wards 
of  the  worst  hospitals."  But  the  water  and  the  vermin  seem  to 
have  disappeared.  The  rooms,  however,  were  fall  of  contagion, 
for  they  had  not  been  cleaned  from  time  immemorial,  and 
though  Ploward  had  been  washed  again  and  again  with  warm 
water,  he  found  his  appetite  failing,  and  that  a  slow  fever  was 
beginning  to  f^isten  upon  him.  But  he  was  on  no  theatrical 
mission,  and  would  die  at  his  post  only  when  all  remedy  ab- 
solutely failed  him ;  his  stout  English  heart  had  never  yet 
fainted  ;  and  here,  again,  we  meet  the  difficulties  of  the  theory 
touching  his  slow  and  shiftless  dullness.  With  the  aid  of  the 
English  consul,  he  obtained  brushes  and  lime  ;  his  attendant — 
for  a  consideration — assisted  him  in  manufacturing  whitewash  ; 
despite  the  prejudices  of  the  observers,  he  rose  up  three  hours 
before  his  guard,  and  commenced,  along  with  his  former  assist- 
ant, to  whitewash  his  apartment.  He  resolved  to  lock  up  his 
guard  if  he  interfered ;  we  are  almost  sorry  the  man  did  not, 
for  most  certainly  Howard  would  have  kept  to  his  determina^ 
tion.  He  did  not,  however,  and  the  only  result  was,  that  all 
who  passed  by  looked  with  astonishment  at  the  whitened  and 
wholesome  walls,  where  so  many  had  been  contented  to  pine 
and  repine,  with  no  attempt  at  cure. 

The  days  in  the  Venice  lazaretto  rolled  slowly  on,  wearisome, 
dismal,  unvarying  ;  Howard  watched  every  thing,  knew  every 
thing,  and  felt  the  weariness  he  longed  to  relieve.     His  faith 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PIIILAN'TIIROPY.  147 

failed  not ;  with  calm  and  easy  feelings  he  looked  forward  to 
the  term  of  his  confmement.  But  suddenly  there  came  a 
change :  darker  clouds  than  had  ever  yet  cast  their  shadow 
over  him  took  their  course  toward  that  dreary  lazaretto.  On 
the  11th  of  October,  1786,  he  received  letters  from  England, 
with  two  pieces  of  information.  The  one  was,  that  his  son 
was  following  evil  courses,  and  dashing  wildly  on  in  a  path 
whose  end,  dimly  indicated  to  the  father,  must  be  one  of  the 
deepest  darkness :  the  other  that  a  movement  was  proceeding 
in  England,  under  high  and  promising  auspices,  for  the  erection 
of  a  monument  to  himself.  Not  hearing,  at  first,  the  worst 
concerning  his  son,  he  wrote  home  with  deep  sorrow,  yet  in 
hope.  The  proposal  for  a  monument  next  required  his  atten- 
tion. An  English  gentleman  had  formerly  had  an  interview 
with  Howard  at  Rome  of  an  hour's  length,  and  the  result  was 
an  admiration  on  the  part  of  the  former  which  knew  no  bounds. 
On  his  return  to  England  he  had  proposed,  through  the  columns 
of  the  "  Gentleman's  Magazine,"  that  a  public  monument  should 
be  erected  to  one  whom  he  styled  "  the  most  truly  glorious 
of  human  beings."  The  widespread  and  profound  admiration 
for  Howard  which,  ere  this  time,  had  sunk  into  the  British 
mind,  had  thus  found  vent ;  at  once  the  proposal  had  taken 
effect,  and  the  movement  was  headed  by  certain  noblemen. 
With  astonishment  it  was  heard  that  Howard  wrote,  absolutely 
refusing  the  honor,  and  alleging  that  its  idea  gave  him  exquisite 
pain.  At  first  this  was  thought  a  graceful  mode  of  acceptance, 
or  at  least  a  struggle  of  excessive  modesty,  easily  to  be  over- 
borne ;  but  the  fiict  was  soon  put  beyond  dispute.  Even  after 
long  arguing  and  urging  by  intimate  and  honored  friends,  lie 
decidedly  and  unalterably  refused  his  consent.  Erom  the  la- 
zaretto of  Venice,  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Mr.  Smith  of  Bedford, 
rehearsing  the  directions  he  had  given  ere  quitting  Cardington 


148  HOWARD  ; 

respecting  his  obsequies  ;  his  words  were  as  follows,  we  copy 
them  with  no  alteration  and  with  no  comment : — 

"  (a)  As  to  mj  burial,  not  to  exceed  ten  pounds. 
*'(&)  My  tomb  to  be  a  plain  slab  of  marble,  placed  under  that  of  my 
dear  Harriet's  in  Cardington  Church,  with  this  inscription : — 

"  Jobn  Howard,  died ,  aged  — . 

"  'My  hope  is  in  Christ.' " 

Some  time  after,  in  grateful  and  courteous  terms,  he  signified 
to  his  well-wishers  in  England,  that  his  resolution  was  fixed, 
and  that  he  would  accept  no  public  mark  of  approbation  what- 
ever. 

Let  this  fact  be  fully  and  calmly  considered ;  and  let  it  then 
be  said  whether  what  we  have  alleged  regarding  Howard's 
grand  motive  in  his  work,  is  other  than  the  bare  and  faintly- 
expressed  truth.  For  himself  he  vfould  have  no  glory.  Jle 
accept  honor  from  men,  who  was  the  weakest  of  instruments, 
and  whose  highest  honor  it  was  that  he  was  worthy  to  be  made 
an  instrument  at  all  in  the  hand  of  God !  He  stop  to  be 
crowned  by  men,  whom  the  Almighty  had  honored  with  His 
high  command,  and  permitted  to  give  strength  and  comfort  for 
Him  !  He  listen  to  the  applause  of  the  nations,  whom  his  in- 
most heart  knew  to  be  weak  and  unworthy,  and  whose  most 
inspiring  yet  indestructible  hope  it  was,  that  he  might  be  num- 
bered even  among  the  least  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven  !  The 
people  seemed  in  loud  acclaim  to  say.  Thou  hast  brought  us 
water  out  of  the  rock  :  Howard,  with  eager  face,  and  out- 
stretched hand,  and  heart  pained  to  the  quick,  cried  out,  I  have 
done  nothing,  I  deserve  nothing ;  God  has  done  all. 

Released  from  the  lazaretto,  and  after  spending  a  week  in 
Venice,  Howard  proceeded  by  sea  to  Trieste,  and  thence  to 
Vienna.    Durmg  this  time,  the  fever  he  had  averted  for  a  time 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  149 

continued  to  creep  over  him,  the  whole  air  of  the  lazaretto 
having  been  infected  ;  it  greatly  impaired  his  strength,  and  the 
accounts,  deepening  in  sadness,  which  reached  him  respecting 
his  son,  made  his  affliction  almost  too  heavy  to  be  borne  :  "  1 
am  reduced  by  fatigue  of  body  and  mind,  I  have  great  reason 
to  bless  God  my  resolution  does  not  forsake  me  in  so  many 
solitary  hours."  It  did  not  forsake  him,  it  remained  firm  as  a 
rock  in  vexed  surge,  it  could  ever  raise  its  head  into  the  pure 
light  of  God's  smile ;  but  human  faith  has  not  often  been  so 
sorely  tried.  In  the  letter  written  from  Vienna,  from  which 
the  above  words  were  taken,  he  referred  in  approving  terms  to 
the  conduct  toward  his  son  of  several  domestics  whom  he  left 
at  Cardington,  expressed  his  persuasion  that  it  arose  out  of  re- 
gard to  his  mother,  and  concluded  the  paragraph  in  these 
words : — "  Who  I  rejoice  is  dead.''''  He  often  thought  of  Har- 
riet, and  we  may  conceive  that  now,  in  his  extreme  sorrow, 
the  old  days  would  flit  past  him  robed  in  the  still  and  melan- 
choly light  of  memory  ;  that  tender  and  to  him  beautiful  wife 
seemed  to  return,  to  lean  over  him  in  his  loneliness  and  sickness 
of  heart ;  but  he  thought  of  his  son,  and  the  tear  which  started 
to  his  own  eye  was  transferred  by  imagination  to  that  of  his 
Harriet,  where  perchance  he  had  never  seen  one  before  ;  then 
love  arose  and  triumphed  over  anguish,  and  he  blessed  God 
that  his  best  beloved  was  lying  still.  Has  art  ever  surpassed 
the  pathos  of  these  words  1 

Early  in  1787,  Howard  was  again  in  England,  proceeding  to 
make  arrangements  respecting  his  son.  The  latter  was  a 
hopeless  maniac.  He  appears  to  have  been  of  that  common 
class  of  young  men,  whom  strong  passions,  weak  judgments, 
and  good-natured,  silly  facility,  render  a  prey  to  those  who 
combine  artfulness  with  vice.  A  servant  in  whom  Howard 
placed  absolute  confidence  betrayed  his  trust  infamously,  al- 


150  HOWARD  ; 

lured  his  charge  into  evil,  and  excited  in  his  breast  contempt 
for  his  fothcr.  That  father,  ever  most  anxious  to  provide  him 
the  best  and  safest  superintendence  and  tuition,  had  sent  him 
to  prosecute  his  education  at  Edinburgh,  where  he  resided  with 
Dr.  Black.  There  it  was  that  prolonged  habits  of  vice  fatally- 
impaired  his  constitution,  and  after  a  period  he  became  de- 
ranged. In  this  condition,  watched  over  with  all  the  care  and 
kindness  which  his  father's  efforts  could  secure,  he  lingered  for 
a  considerable  number  of  years,  and  died.  It  was  a  most  touch- 
ing case ;  for  he  seems  not  to  have  been  without  that  gleam  of 
nobleness  which  so  often  accompanies  and  adorns  a  character 
intellectually  by  no  means  strong.  In  Edinburgh  once,  when 
some  one  spoke  disrespectfully  of  his  father,  and  basely  hinted 
that  his  philanthropic  expenses  might  impair  the  fortunes  of 
his  son,  yomig  Howard  indignantly  resented  the  insinuation, 
and  asked  how  he  could  ever  do  so  much  good  with  the  money 
as  his  father. 

Howard  now  remained  in  England  for  about  two  years, 
seeing  his  son  provided  for  as  well  as  was  possible,  and  pre- 
paring the  result  of  his  late  travels  for  the  press.  His  religion 
still  continued  to  deepen  and  grow  more  fervent,  the  feeling 
of  the  littleness  of  his  efforts  and  powers  to  increase.  The  few 
private  memoranda  that  remain  of  the  period  breathe  an  earnest 
and  habitual  devotion ;  there  is  an  occasional  flash  of  clear  in- 
tellectual insight  and  moral  ardor ;  but,  most  of  all,  they  are 
characterized  by  humility.  "  Examples  of  tremendous  wrath 
will  be  held  up,  and  what  if  I  should  be  among  these  examples." 
"  Behold,  I  am  vile,  what  shall  I  answer  Thee,  oh  my  God ;  I 
have  no  claim  on  Thy  bounty  but  what  springs  from  the  be- 
nignity of  Thy  nature.  God  forbid  that  I  should  glory  save 
in  the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ."  "A  few  of  God's  people  that 
met  in  an  upper  room  appear,  in  my  eye,  greater  than  all  the 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     P  U  I  L  A  N  T  II  R  0  P  Y.  151 

Eoman  empire.  God  kept  them."  "Where  there  is  most 
holiness,  there  is  most  humility.  Never  does  our  understand- 
ing shine  more  than  when  it  is  employed  in  religion.  In  cer- 
tain circumstances  retirement  is  criminal ;  with  a  holy  fire  I 
would  proceed."  "  Ease,  affluence,  and  honors,  are  tempta- 
tions, which  the  ivorld  holds  out — but  remember, '  the  fashion 
of  this  world  passeth  away' — on  the  other  hand,  fatigue, 
poverty,  sufferings,  and  dangers,  with  an  approving  conscience. 
Oh  God !  my  heart  is  fixed,  trusting  in  thee !  My  God  !  Oh 
glorious  words !  there  is  a  treasure  !  in  comparison  of  which 
all  things  in  this  world  are  dross." 

England  was  now  for  Howard  all  hung  as  it  were  in  weeds 
of  mourning.  The  hope  to  which  he  had  clung  that  his  son 
might  cheer  him  in  his  old  age  had  vanished  utterly,  or  at  least 
the  term  when  such  might  be  possible  could  not  be  fixed. 
There  were  probably  in  this  world  few  sadder  hearts  at  that 
time  than  John  Howard's.  But  he  had  not  yet  discovered  the 
secret  of  the  plague ;  there  was  still  work  for  mercy  to  do :  it 
was  now  perhaps  the  greatest  happiness  of  which  he  was  ca- 
pable to  go  upon  that  work.  And  he  went ;  the  weary  heart  to 
soothe  and  heal  the  weary-hearted ;  one  of  the  saddest  men  in 
England,  to  meet  the  plague. 

On  the  27th  of  September,  1789,  he  was  at  Moscow.  He 
seemed  now  to  feel  that  his  end  was  not  far,  and "  we  find  him 
engaged  in  solemn  transactions  with  his  God.  He  brought  out 
that  old  dedication  of  himself  to  his  Maker,  which  we  saw  hiiu 
subscribe  in  the  days  when  his  life  had  first  been  darkened,  and 
when  the  terrors  of  the  Almighty,  which  had  rolled  like  low 
cloudy  masses  over  his  soul,  were  just  being  suffused  with 
celestial  radiance  in  the  full  beaming  out  of  the  Sun  of  Right- 
eousness. Again  he  owned  his  entire  unworthiness  and  bis 
entire  weakness,  again  he  looked  up  to  the  Rock  of  Ages,  again 


152  HOWARD  ; 

he  gave  up  his  soul,  spirit,  and  body,  forever  and  ever,  to 
God.  As  we  gather,  too,  from  the  pages  of  Brown,  he  looked 
again  on  that  covenant  which  his  beloved  had  made  with  her 
Pather  in  heaven  :  we  think  we  can  see  the  old  and  weary  man 
gazing  over  its  lines,  while  a  tear  steals  from  his  eye,  a  tear  of 
lonely  sadness,  yet  touched  with  one  gleam  of  light,  from  the 
thought  that  it  will  not  now  be  long  ere  he  again  meet  his 
Harriet.  This  was  in  the  September  of  1789  :  it  was  his  last 
pause  on  his  hard  life-journey,  his  last  draught  of  living  waters 
from  those  fountains  which  divine  Love  never  permits  to  dry 
up  in  the  desert  of  the  world  :  again  he  arose  and  Avent  on  his 
way,  but  now  the  pearly  gates  and  the  golden  walls  stood 
before  the  eye  of  faith,  calm,  beautiful,  eternal,  on  the  near 
horizon. 

In  the  beginning  of  January,  1790,  he  was  residing  at  Kher- 
son, a  village  on  the  Dnieper,  near  the  Crimea,  still  as  of  old 
with  indefatigable  resolution  and  kindness  pursuing  his  work. 
In  visiting  a  young  lady  dying  of  a  fever  the  infection  seized 
him,  and  he  soon  felt  that  death  was  upon  him.  On  his  death- 
bed he  was  just  what  we  have  always  known  him.  We  hear 
the  voice  of  prayer  for  his  son,  of  inextinguishable  pity  for  the 
afflicted,  and,  concerning  himself,  these  words  addressed  to  his 
friend  Admiral  Priestman,  "  Let  me  beg  of  you,  as  you  value 
your  old  friend,  not  to  suffer  any  pomp  to  be  used  at  my  fu- 
neral, nor  any  monument,  nor  monumental  inscription  whatso- 
ever, to  mark  where  I  am  laid  :  but  lay  me  quietly  in  the 
earth,  place  a  sun-dial  over  my  grave,  and  let  me  be  forgotten." 
Thus,  with  the  same  calm,  saintly  smile,  so  still  but  so  im- 
movable, which  he  had  worn  during,  life,  he  passed  away. 

All  nations  had  now  heard  of  Howard,  and  all  nations  hon- 
ored him :  England,  in  silent  pride,  placed  his  statue  in  St. 


AND     THE     RTSE     OF     PniLANTIIROPY.  153 

PaLl's  Cathedral.  Tliere  he  remained  unmoved,  and  his  name 
more  and  more  became  a  word  of  love  and  of  admiration  in 
the  households  of  the  world.  Burke  spoke  of  him  in  his  own 
burning  and  majestic  terms ;  Foster  pointed  to  him  as  one 
cased  in  an  iron  mail  of  resolution  such  as  made  him  a  wonder 
among  the  sons  of  men  ;  Chalmers  responded  to  his  nobleness 
with  all  the  tameless  enthusiasm  of  his  royal  heart.  But  in 
our  day  a  mighty  hand  has  been  stretched  forth  to  drag  him 
from  his  seat  among  the  immortal  ones  of  time :  one,  of  per- 
haps more  wondrous  genius,  and  in  some  sense  of  more  pene- 
trating intellectual  glance,  than  either  Chalmers,  Burke,  or  Fos- 
ter, has  flung  quiet  but  remorseless  scorn  on  Howard.  We 
mean,  of  course,  Mr.  Carlyle.  We  deem  it  unnecessary  to 
quote  his  words :  those  which  appear  to  us  to  approach  nearest 
to  positive  misconception  and  injustice  we  have  already  set 
before  the  reader.  They  are  well  known,  occurring  in  his  cel- 
ebrated pamphlet  on  ]\Iodel  Prisons.  We  think  it  can  be 
stated  in  a  word  or  two  what  Mr.  Carlyle  has  seen,  and  what, 
making  our  appeal  to  readers,  we  must  say  he  has  not  seen  in 
Howard.  He  has  seen  regarding  him  that  of  which  he  ap- 
pears, in  all  cases,  to  possess  a  more  vivid  perception  than  any 
writer  of  past  or  ^Dresent  times — the  intellectual  type  and  cali- 
ber. We  have  had,  and  still  have,  our  doubts  whether  a 
strong  case  might  not  be  made  out  in  defense  even  here,  if  the 
5iffercnce  between  working  and  talking  talent  were  accurately 
defined,  and  the  dullness  of  biographers  taken  fully  into  account. 
But  we  care  not  to  urge  this  consideration  on  behalf  of  How- 
ard. We  claim  for  him  no  intellectual  glory.  We  concede 
that,  if  Mr.  Carlyle  does  not  impute  to  him  any  vulgar  motive, 
of  desire  to  make  an  appearance,  or  the  like — and  we  leave 
readers  to  judge  whether  such  an  impression  is,  or  is  not,  con- 
veyed by  the  words  we  have  cited — there  is  nothing  which  he 
7* 


154  HOWARD  ; 

says  concerning  him  demonstrably  false :  say  that  his  highest 
talents  were  "  English  veracity,  solidity,  simplicity,"  believe 
him  even  to  have  been  (if  you  can,  for  we  positively  can  not) 
"  dull,  and  even  dreary,"  still,  we  ask,  is  his  highest  praise  the 
words,  so  severely  qualified  by  the  spirit  of  the  context,  "  the 
modest,  noble  Howard?"  Let  any  one  look  along  that  life, 
calmly  figuring  it  to  himself,  pondering  it  till  he  knows  its  real 
meaning  and  vital  principle,  and  say,  whether  there  burns  not 
through  it,  however  vailed  from  the  general  eye,  a  sublime,  an 
immortal  radiance.  Let  him  say,, whether  we  can  not  utter, 
with  peculiar  emphasis  and  veneration  these  words,  "  The  holy 
Howard."  It  is  on  this  we  found  his  claim  to  be  honored  by 
men ;  that  he  was  honored  by  God  to  live  nearer  to  Himself 
than  any  but  a  chosen  few  of  the  human  race. 

And  is  this  not  a  reasonable  and  equitable  claim  1  Is  it  for- 
ever to  be  impossible  for  a  man  to  be  honored  of  men  unless 
his  intellectual  power  is  great  1  Ah  !  that  were  surely  hard  ; 
surely  essential  equality  were  thus  denied  me  as  a  man ;  surely 
I  could  not  so  be  calmly  content  under  this  sun.  If  our  rela- 
tion to  the  Infinite  is  of  that  nature  which  Christ  has  unfolded, 
it  can  not  be  so.  If,  from  the  seraphim  who  receive  the  light 
of  the  throne  on  their  white  robes,  to  the  poor  widow  who 
kneels  by  her  husband's  corpse,  and  bows  her  head  to  the  God 
who  has  given  and  taken  away,  we  are  but  servants  of  one 
Master,  soldiers  of  one  host,  members  of  one  family,  it  can  not 
be  so.  For  then  the  highest  honor  of  the  archangel  and  of 
the  child  is,  that  he  does,  well  and  gladly,  and  giving  God  the 
glory,  what  God  bids  him  do.  And  methinks  it  is  best  even 
so.  We  will  honor  the  old  soldier,  whose  name  we  have  nev- 
er heard,  but  who  at  eventide  contentedly  wound  the  colors 
round  his  heart,  and  died  for  the  good  cause,  as  much  as  we 
honor  the  Gromwell  who  led  that  cause  to  the  pinnacles  of  the 


AND     IIIE     RISE     OF     PHILANTIIRO  .65 

world  :  ay,  and  without  refusing  to  obey  Crom  atCa/  cither 
witho  it  losing  one  atom  of  the  real  worth  and  value  of  so- 
called  "  hero-worship."  The  angel  who  ministers  to  a  dying 
beggar  may  hold  himself  as  highly  honored  as  he  who  keeps 
the  gate  of  heaven. 

Hence  the  honor  we  claim  for  Howard.  Weak  he  may 
have  been,  slightly  gifted  if  you  will :  he  knew  the  sound  of 
his  Father's  voice ;  he  could  give  his  poor  life  for  his  sake.  He 
showed  to  all  men  how  the  weakest  do  their  work  in  God's 
army ;  really  he  did  exliibit,  with  a  strange  revealing  power, 
how,  were  men  unfallen,  every  order  of  intellectual  faculty  might 
be  employed  to  its  full  extent,  but  with  equal  merit,  that  is 
with  none,  and  with  equal  reward,  that  is,  the  free  smiling  of 
God's  countenance.  Despise  him  who  will  on  earth,  in  heaven 
Isaac  Newton  does  not  look  with  scorn  on  John  Howard !  Is 
not  the  special  honoring  of  intellectual  greatness,  nay,  the 
special  honoring  of  any  human  being,  an  effect  of  the  fall  *?  Is 
it  not  the  true  attitude  of  all  the  fuaite  to  look  around  ^Yith.  love 
on  their  brethren,  but  with  undivided  gaze  to  look  iqnvard  to 
God  1  It  would  seem  assuredly  to  be  so,  and  that  we  now 
honor  our  great  ones  merely  because  we  must  fix  our  poor 
eyes  so  steadfastly  on  them,  while,  commissioned  by  God,  they 
lead  us  onward  toward  the  eternal  light. 

Howard  is  almost  alone  among  those  whom  men  have 
agreed  to  honor.  It  is  the  intellectually  mighty,  who,  by  that 
necessity  of  our  position  just  glanced,  become  best  known. 
Thousands  there  may  be,  and  there  always  are,  whose  whole 
lives  are  "  faithful  prayers,"  who  would,  with  grateful  joy,  suffer 
any  thing  for  the  sake  of  Christ.  But  Howard  was  separated 
by  God  for  a  work  which  could  not  but  attract  attention ;  an 
arduous  and  a  heroic  work,  for  which  the  time  had  fully  come 
in  the  history  of  the  world.     For  that  work  he  was  qualified, 


ISe  HOWARD  ; 

and  it,  with  absolute  thoroughness,  he  did.  Money  was  as 
nothing  in  his  estimation  in  comparison  of  it ;  but  he  was  as  far 
above  fame  as  money,  and  no  danger  or  toil  could  daunt  him : 
"cholera  doctors,"  Mr  Carlyle  compares  to  him,  but  he  went 
where  hired  doctors  would  not  go,  and  what  cholera  doctor, 
what  man  among  men,  ever  went  for  two  months  into  solitary 
confinement,  amid  infection  and  all  discomfort,  if  perchance  he 
might  bring  thence  one  drop  of  balm  for  the  sorrowful  ?  Then 
consider  his  humility  :  ah !  surely  Howard  was  one  of  the  men 
who  might  have  been  left  on  his  pedestal.  Think  how  he  him- 
self would  have  met  Mr.  Carlyle's  scorn.  "  It  is  true,"  he 
would  have  said  ;  "  such  I  was,  if  so  good ;  I  was  nothing.  Go 
nito  your  great  cathedral,  and  from  the  midst  of  your  venerat- 
ed dead  cast  forth  the  statue  of  John  Howard ;  let  a  white 
tablet  alone  recall  my  memory,  and  place  it  beside  that  of  my 
Harriet. "  Howard  never  asked  his  fame ;  in  his  life  he 
would  accept  no  votive  wreath :  whatever  had  been  said  of  his 
followers,  regarding  him  one  might  have  expected  silence.  In 
a  very  extended  sense,  his  fame  was  unsolicited.  Not  only  was 
himself  of  slow  speech,  but  his  biographers  were  such  as  we 
have  said.  Yet  the  inarticulate  human  instinct  discerned  that 
there  was  around  him  that  beauty  of  holiness,  which,  in  the 
eyes  of  God  and  of  angels,  is  alone  honorable,  and  which  it  is 
well  for  men  to  honor,  and  placed  him  in  the  pantheon  of  the 
world  :  that  human  instinct,  we  think,  was  right ;  there  surely 
he  will  remain.  Look  not  for  him  among  the  high  intellectual 
thrones,  among  earth's  sages  or  poets,  among  earth's  kings  or 
conquerors.  But  yonder,  among  the  few  lowly  yet  immortal 
ones,  whose  fame  has  been  endorsed  in  heaven,  see  John  How- 
ard. His  image  is  formed  of  marble,  pure  as  the  everlasting 
snow;  away  from  it,  as  if  desecrating  its  whiteness,  fall  all  the 
robes  of  false  adornment  in  which  men  have  sought  to  envelop 


AND     THE     RISE     OF     PHILANTHROPY.  157 

it,  away  also  fall  all  dimming,  defacing,  distorting  vails  of 
stupid  misconception ;  and  there  beams  out  clearly  the  face  of 
a  simple,  humble  man,  earnest  of  purpose,  celestially  calm,  and 
with  one  tear  of  inexpressible  love  on  the  cheek ;  from  the 
heavens  comes  a  viewless  hand,  encircling  the  head  with  a 
serene  and  saintly  halo,  its  mild  radiance  falling  over  the 
flice,  and  blending  with  its  speechless  human  pity ;  the  eye  is 
fixed  on  the  eternal  mansions,  and  the  lips  seem  ever,  in  hum- 
ble and  tremulous  gratitude,  to  say,  "  Lord  God,  why  me  ?" 
The  outline  and  features  of  that  face  Mr.  Carlyle  saw,  but  that 
halo,  and  the  fixedness  of  that  heavenward  gaze,  he  seems  to 
us  not  to  have  seen. 


■    CHAPTER  III. 

WILBEEFORCE  ;     AND   THE   DEVELOPMENT    OF   PHILANTHROPY. 

William  Wilberforce  was  born  in  Hull,  in  August,  1759. 
The  auspices  of  his  birth  were  in  important  respects  favorable ; 
a  first  glance  reveals  no  exception  or  abatement  to  their  happi- 
ness. Of  a  wealthy  and  ancient  family,  he  opened  his  eyes  on 
a  life-path  paved  by  affluence,  and  thick-strewn  with  the  flowers 
of  indulgence.  Every  influence  around  him  was  of  comfort 
and  kindness ;  wherever  his  young  eye  fell,  it  met  a  smile. 
And  his  own  nature  was  such  as  to  make  him  peculiarly  sus- 
ceptive of  the  delights  around.  He  was,  it  is  true,  a  tender 
and  delicate  child,  small  for  his  age,  and  in  no  respect  of  prom- 
ising appearance ;  but  there  was  in  his  heart  an  irrepressible 
fountain  of  kind  and  guileless  vivacity,  his  voice  was  of  sweet 
silvery  tone,  he  was  gentle  and  considerate  in  his  ways ;  alto- 
gether, he  was  a  brisk,  mild-spirited,  fascinating  little  thing, 
who  could  center  in  himself  every  ray  of  kindness  and  com- 
fort, and  enhance  their  personal  enjoyment  by  radiating  them 
out  on  all  around  him.  All  this  was  well ;  perhaps  a  happier 
sphere  could  scarce  be  imagined :  yet  we  can  not  pronounce  it 
in  the  highest  sense  ausj^icious,  because  there  was  wanting  in 
it  any  high  presiding  influence  of  character.  The  boy's  eye 
could  rest  on  no  clear,  earnest  light  of  godliness,  burning  in 
his  father's  house ;  his  parents  were  conventionally  excellent 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PniLANTUROPY.    159 

people,  respectable,  cheerful,  hospitable,  gay,  nothing  better  or 
worse. 

In  17G8,  the  fothcr  of  Wilberforcc  died;  the  latter  inherited 
a  rich  patrimony,  which  was  afterward  increased.  The  child, 
now  nine  years  old,  was  sent  to  reside  with  an  uncle,  living  by 
turns  at  Wimbledon  and  St.  James's  Place.  Here  he  came 
within  the  sphere  of  earnest  piety.  His  aunt  was  one  of  those 
unnoticed  witnesses  to  the  inextinguishable  power  of  vital 
Christianity,  whose  light,  kindled  by  the  instrumentality  of 
Whitefield,  spread  a  gentle  but  precious  radiance  through  the 
spiritual  haze  of  the  last  century.  Under  her  mfluence,  his  mind 
was  roused  to  a  new  earnestness,  and  turned  with  great  force 
in  a  religious  direction.  At  the  age  of  twelve  he  wrote  such 
letters  on  religious  subjects  as  were  afterward  deemed  by  some 
worthy  of  publication ;  and,  though  this  was  wisely  prevented, 
we  can  not  err  in  considering  the  fact  a  proof  that  his  boyish 
intellect  was  brought  into  earnest  and  j)rotracted  consideration 
of  religious  truth. 

This  state  of  matters  was  abruptly  changed.  His  mother 
took  the  alarm.  The  prospect  that  her  son  should  become  a 
canting  Methodist,  was  appalling.  She  immediately  recalled 
him  to  Yorkshire,  and  commenced  the  process  of  erasing  every 
mark  of  strong  individual  character,  of  softening  down  into 
mere  insipidity  and  common-place  every  trait  of  personal  god- 
liness, which  had  appeared.  He  was  at  once  inaugurated  in  a 
course  of  systematic  triviality,  not  to  end  until  it  was  fatally 
too  late,  whose  great  object  was  to  clothe  him  in  the  garb  of 
harmless,  respectable  frivolity,  and  leave  him  at  last  converted 
into  that  aimless  worshiper  of  the  hour,  that  lukewarm  trimmer 
between  all — in  religion,  literature,  philosophy,  and  feeling — 
which  is,  either  cold  or  hot,  that  weathercock  of  vacant  mode, 
that  all-embracing  type  of  the  conventional — a  man  of  the  world. 


160  wilberforce; 

His  name  threw  open  to  him,  on  his  return  from  London, 
every  circle  of  fashion  in  Hull.  Though  still  so  young,  he 
was  introduced  into  all  sorts  of  gay  society.  At  first  his 
lately-gained  principles  offered  a  firm  opposition.  The  loud, 
half  animal  life  of  the  hearty,  hospitable  magnates  of  Hull 
contrasted  boldly  and  unfavorably  with  the  religious  earnest- 
ness of  his  aunt's  spiritual  life.  The  fashion  was  to  have  din- 
ner-parties at  two  and  sumptuous  suppers  at  six,  the  enjoyment 
having  evidently  a  close  and  important  connection  with  the 
eating  and  drinking.  Of  card-parties,  dancing,  and  theater- 
going, there  was  no  end.  In  all  this,  he  found  at  first  no 
pleasure ;  he  turned  in  aversion  from  the  coarse  stimulants  of 
sense,  and  sighed  for  the  pure  and  lofty  religion  he  had  left. 
But  he  was  still  a  mere  boy.  The  kindness  universally  show- 
ered on  him  could  not  be  received  with  indifference  by  his 
warm  and  impressible  nature ;  his  was  the  age  when  new  hab- 
its can  yet  be  formed,  and  the  process  still  result  in  charm ; 
worst  of  all,  he  perceived  that  his  sprightliness  and  musical 
powers  enabled  him  already  to  diffuse  joy  around  him.  The 
man  who  can  fascinate  society  is  he  who  of  all  others  is  most 
subject  to  its  fascination:  we  can  not  wonder  that  the  boy 
Wilberforce  soon  participated  with  joyous  sympathy  in  all  the 
merry-making  of  Hull. 

We  enter  no  protest  against  the  healthful  gayety  of  youth. 
Even  in  that  we  here  contemplate,  there  might,  in  many  cases, 
have  been  nothing  of  present  culpability  or  future  injurious 
tendency.  The  young  exuberant  strength  of  boyhood  health 
fully  and  rightly  prefers  the  open  field  to  the  close  school- 
room, the  athletic  sport  or  joyous  dance  to  the  demure  and 
measured  walk.  A  strong  mental  endowment  will,  it  is  true, 
in  most  if  not  in  all  cases,  evince  itself  by  an  element  of 
thoughtfulness  in  early  youth ;  but  it  is  ever  a  circumstance 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PH  I  L  A  NTH  R  0  P  Y.    161 

of  evil  omen,  boding  intellectual  disease,  when  the  thoughtful- 
ness  of  boyhood  is  of  power  sufficient  to  overbear  its  animal 
vivacity  and  sportive  strength.  One  thing,  however,  is  ever 
to  be  borne  in  mind,  touching  amusement  and  its  connection 
with  education ;  it  can  not  be  the  whole,  but  a  part ;  it  must 
derive  its  zest  from  being  the  unstringing  of  the  bow.  In  the 
case  of  ^Yilberforce,  it  can  not  be  doubted  that  it  usurped  a 
place  by  no  means  its  due — a  place  where  its  influence  was  one 
of  almost  unmixed  evil.  And  his  natural  temper  and  disposi- 
tion were  precisely  such  as  rendered  this  circumstance  danger- 
ous. His  mind  was  of  a  sensitive,  impulsive,  lively  cast, 
taking  quickly  the  hue  of  its  environment,  and  perhaps  origi- 
nally deficient  in  self  determining  strength.  To  discipline  his 
restless  energy,  to  concentrate  his  volatile  faculties,  a  firm 
though  kind,  a  calm  and  methodic  though  genial  training  was 
required.  Instead  of  this,  he  was,  from  early  boyhood,  the 
pet  of  gay  circles,  where  no  serious  word  was  spoken,  and 
found  himself  reapuig  most  abundantly  the  approbation  of  his 
mother,  when  he  flung  all  earnest  thought  aside,  gave  the  odds 
and  ends  of  his  time  to  study,  and  made  it  the  business  of  his 
life  to  be  a  dashing,  lively,  engaging  member  of  fashionable 
society.  That  which  occupied  the  formal  place  of  instruction, 
was  the  tuition  of  a  clerical  gentleman  who  kept  an  academy. 
While  residing  with  him,  the  main  part  of  Wilberforce's  edu- 
cation was  what  intellectual  aliment  he  could  gather  at  the  ta- 
bles of  fox-hunting  squires  and  jovial  county  gentlemen  ;  and 
we  can  conceive  the  effect  upon  the  now  faint  religious  im- 
pressions of  the  boy,  of  the  spectacle  of  a  man,  set  apart  to 
preach  the  Gospel,  whose  whole  life  was  a  gentlemanly  sneer  at 
the  spirituality  of  his  office.  Ere  he  proceeded  to  enter  the 
university,  which  he  did  when  seventeen  years  of  age,  every 
lingering  trace  of  his  early  earnestness  had  been  eflaced ;  he 


162  wilberforce; 

was  in  that  soft  plastic  state  -which  is  incapable  of  exerting  any 
reaction  whatever  upon  surrounding  influences.  In  all  that  re- 
lated to  the  external  qualities  of  a  young  man  of  fashion,  his 
training  had  been  amply  successful.  His  manners  were  the 
happy  union  of  sprightliness,  ease,  and  unaffected  kindness ; 
his  faculties  were  acute,  his  sympathy  warm  and  vivacious,  his 
wit  ready  and  genial ;  he  sung  with  great  grace  and  sweetness. 
Furnished  as  he  was  upon  entering  the  university,  it  is  scare* 
to  be  wondered  at  that  his  sojourn  there  was  well-nigh  vacant 
of  good  :  it  were  perhaps  more  correct  to  say,  that  it  was  fer- 
tile in  evil.  Not  that  it  was  contaminated  by  any  taint  of 
downright  vice :  the  nature  of  Wilberforce  was  always  too 
healthful,  too  open,  free,  and  sunny,  for  that ;  but  that  the 
volatility  which  naturally  characterized  him,  and  whose  final 
triumph,  promoted  by  the  studied  frivolity  of  his  boyhood, 
might  yet  have  been  averted,  was  here  pampered  to  fresh  lux- 
uriance, and  left  to  spread  itself  fairly  over  his  mind ;  that  the 
acquisition  of  the  power  of  sustained  and  earnest  study  was 
fatally  neglected ;  and  that  the  opportunity  of  that  first  intro- 
duction to  the  treasuries  of  the  knowledge  of  the  world,  which 
60  generally  determines  the  extent  to  which  these  treasuries 
are  afterward  availed  of,  was  lost.  At  St.  John's  College, 
Cambridge,  he  fell  among  a  set  of  the  most  pleasant,  good- 
humored,  hearty  fellows  in  the  world  He  had  lots  of  money, 
of  temper,  of  briskness,  of  wit ;  they  had  free,  jovial  ways — 
did  n't  mind  telling  a  good  fellow  what  were  his  good  points — 
could  study  themselves,  but  could  not  perceive  why  a  man  of 
fortune  should  fag — could  probably  tell  a  good  story,  give  and 
take  a  repartee,  appreciate  a  good  song,  or  sing  one — last  of 
all,  and  without  any  question,  had  the  best  appetite  for  good 
wine  and  Yorkshire  pie.  And  so  Wilberforce,  whose  natural 
quickness  enabled  him  to  figure  to  sufhcient  advantage  at  ex- 


AND    THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    PHILANTHROPY.         1G3 

aminations,  left  study  to  the  poor  and  the  dull ;  enough  for 
him  to  be  the  center  of  a  joyous  and  boisterous  throng,  every 
good  thing  he  said  telling  capitally,  every  face  around  the 
board  raying  forth  on  him  smiles  and  thankful  complacency, 
the  hours  dancing  cheerfully  by,  and  casting  no  look  behind  to 
remind  him  that  they  were  gone  forever. 

*'  The  sick  in  body  call  for  aid  ;  the  sick 
In  mind  are  covetous  of  more  disease." 

Those  men  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  had  all  the  best 
feelings  toward  Wilberforce,  and  seemed  to  him  his  truest 
friends.  If  you  had  spoken  of  him  to  any  of  them,  you  would 
have  heard  nothing  but  affectionate  praise,  with  possibly  just 
the  slightest  caustic  mixture  of  contemptuous  pity ;  if,  in  their 
presence,  you  had  called  him  a  fool,  or  struck  him  on  the  face, 
a  score  of  tongues  or  arms  had  moved  to  defend  him.  Yet 
how  well  had  it  been  for  Wilberforce,  had  some  rough  but 
kind-hearted  class-fellow  turned  upon  him,  like  that  class-fellow 
who  saved  Paley  to  British  literature,  and  told  him  roundly 
he  was  a  trifling  fool ;  how  well  for  him  had  his  dancing-boots 
been  exchanged  for  Johnson's  gaping  shoes,  his  Yorkshire  pie 
for  Heyne's  boiled  pease-cods  !  With  bitter  emphasis  would 
he  have  agreed  to  this  in  latter  days,  when  he  looked  back  on 
this  time  with  keen  anguish,  and  said,  that  those  who  should 
have  seen  to  his  instruction,  acted  toward  him  unlike  Christian, 
or  even  honest  men.  But  such  reflections  were  now  far. 
Fanned  by  soft  adulation,  his  heart  told  him  he  was  a  clever 
fellow,  who  would  carry  all  before  him ;  for  the  present,  he 
would  sing  his  song,  and  shuflie  the  cards,  and  enjoy  all  the 
pleasure  he  imparted.  So  it  continued  until  he  approached  the 
season  of  his  majority,  and  it  became  proper  to  choose  a  voca- 
tion for  life. 


164  WILBERFORCE  ; 

Disinclined  to  mercantile  pursuits,  he  withdrew  from  the 
business  of  which  he  was  at  his  majority  to  have  become  a 
partner,  and  turned  to  another  profession  ;  one  which  may  be 
deemed  of  some  importance,  that  of  member  of  the  British 
House  of  Commons.  To  be  one  of  the  governing  counsel  of 
the  British  Empire,  to  adjudicate  on  the  affairs  of  that  consid- 
erable assemblage  of  millions,  to  lend  a  helping  voice  and 
hand  to  steer  the  British  monarchy  in  such  an  era  as  ours,  that 
it  may  ever  have  its  head  forward,  avoiding  collisions,  and 
sunken  rocks,  and  quicksands,  may  be  thought  a  task  of  some 
difficulty  and  solemnity.  The  instinct  of  British  honor  revolts 
at  the  idea  of  its  being  made  a  trade ;  no  salaried  members, 
were  your  legislators  forever  confined  to  a  class  in  conse- 
quence ;  but  there  is  no  such  prevailing  abhorrence  against  its 
being  made  an  amusement.  Accordingly,  it  is  one  of  what 
may  be  styled  the  hereditary  recreations  of  the  British  opulent 
and  aristocratic  classes ;  perhaps  of  a  somewhat  higher  and 
more  imposing  order  than  fox-hunting  and  grouse-shooting ; 
having,  in  particular,  the  advantage  of  serving  as  a  background 
to  these,  giving  them  a  look  of  relaxation  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world,  imparting  to  their  enjoyment  a  fine  zest,  and  freeing 
them  of  all  ennui  or  monotony.  Young  Wilberforce,  whom 
we  have  been  observing,  and  of  whose  education  for  this  pro- 
fession we  can  judge,  thought  that  to  be  an  honorable  member 
would  just  suit  him.  He  had,  indeed,  received  a  good  average 
training  for  the  business.  Qilick  to  acquire,  he  had  secured  a 
fair  amount  of  classical  knowledge,  and  in  those  vital  particu- 
lars, suavity  of  manners,  happy  fluency  of  speech,  generally 
engaging  deportment,  he  was  surpassed  by  none  ;  the  old 
gayeties  of  Hull,  the  Olympian  suppers  of  St.  John's,  and  an 
excellent  musical  talent,  would  probably  set  him  high  among 
young  honorable  members.     Besides,  he  would  spend  the  last 


AND    THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    P  HIL  A  NTIIR  0  PT.        105 

year  of  his  minority  in  London ;  in  feasting  and  addressing  a 
number  of  Hull  freemen  avIio  lived  there,  he  might  make  ad- 
vances in  the  stiff  old  art  of  ruling  men ;  while  his  evenings 
would  be  spent  in  actual  apprenticeshijo  to  his  business  by  at- 
tending the  gallery  of  the  House.  All  this  was  done ;  the 
member  of  the  British  Parliament  deemed  himself  fully  equip- 
ped. Immediately  on  becoming  of  age,  AVilberforce  was  elected 
by  au  overwhelming  majority  for  the  city  of  Hull.  His  seat 
cost  him  between  £8000  and  £9000. 

Returned  by  such  a  constituency,  and  in  such  a  manner,  and 
on  terms  of  personal  intimacy  with  Pitt,  who  had  been  a  Cam- 
bridge acquaintance,  and  whom  he  had  met  in  the  gallery  of 
the  House,  "Wilberforce  found  honorable  membership  a  most 
easy  and  animated  aflair.  Acting  as  background,  in  the  way 
we  have  indicated,  it  threw  out  finally  the  foreground  of  fun 
and  frolic,  of  sport  and  light  joyance,  of  feast,  and  dance,  and 
merriment,  on  which  he  acted.  At  all  the  clubs  he  was  received 
with  the  most  cheerful  welcome  ;  there,  with  the  men  in  whose 
hands  were,  or  were  soon  to  be,  the  destinies  of  the  British  na- 
tion, he  laughed,  and  chatted,  and  sung,  and  gambled.  His 
winnings  were  once  or  twice  a  hundred  pounds,  and  happening, 
on  one  occasion,  from  an  unforeseen  circumstance,  to  keep  the 
bank,  he  cleared  six  hundred.  But  here,  as  always,  on  the 
verge  of  sheer  vice,  his  better  nature  checked  him  ;  what  would 
have  stamped  a  man  of  radical  baseness  an  irretrievable  gam- 
bler, pained  and  shocked  Wilberforce :  he  played  no  more. 
There  was  no  abatement  of  any  of  the  other  pleasures.  "  Pox, 
Sheridan,  Pitzpatrick,  and  all  your  leadmg  men,"  frequented 
these  clubs ;  Pitt  showed  himself  there  as  the  wittiest  of  the 
witty ;  altogether,  the  spectacle  presented  by  British  statesmen 
behind  the  scenes  was  one  of  mirth  and  great  exhilaration. 
Gay,  boisterous,  frivolous  they  were  ;  not  devoid  of  a  certain 


166  wilberforce; 

earnestness  and  business-like  expertness  when  at  their  work, 
yet  sportive  and  light  of  heart,  as  men  whose  places  were  safe, 
and  who,  for  the  rest,  had  only  the  matters  of  a  British  empire 
to  think  of.  Wilberforce  was  by  no  means  a  technically  in- 
active member ;  he  presented  to  the  eye  of  the  world  an  un- 
impeachable aspect,  and  kept  his  own  conscience  perfectly 
quiet.  Seeming,  to  himself  and  others,  to  be  doing  his  whole 
duty,  he  was  satisfied  and  happy.  Glancing,  with  his  quick, 
clear  eye,  into  circle  after  circle — lighting  up  all  faces,  by  the 
gentle  might  of  his  wit,  if  not  with  uncontrollable  mirth,  yet 
with  soft,  comfortable  smiles — suiting  himself,  by  a  tact  swift 
and  sudden  as  magic,  to  the  society  or  subject  of  the  moment 
— gesticulating  and  mimicking  with  rare  histrionic  art — ^pouring 
forth,  in  unbroken  stream,  a  warm  and  glowing  eloquence — or 
gliding  softly  into  one  of  those  songs  to  which  his  rich  melli- 
fluous voice  lent  such  witching  charms — he  was  the  life  and 
soul  of  supper-parties,  the  caressed  of  fashionable  circles,  the 
darling  of  the  clubs.  The  Prince  of  Wales  praised  his  singing ; 
could  human  ambition  look  higher  than  that  1 

After  some  parliamentary  work  of  this  nature,  Wilberforce 
flits  gayly  across  the  Channel ;  we  find  him  in  the  autumn  of 
1783,  with  his  friends  Pitt  and  Elliot,  in  the  French  capital. 
It  is  strangely  interesting  to  mark  him  as  he  flutters  among  the 
Vauxhall  luminaries  of  the  old  French  court ;  light  and  friv- 
olous almost  as  they,  yet  with  an  open  eye,  and  an  English 
shrewdness,  which  note  well  the  salient  points  in  the  dream- 
ike  scene.  His  jottings  are  brief  but  suggestive : — Supped 
at  Count  Donson's.  Round-table :  all  English  but  Donson. 
Noailles,  Dupont.  Queen  came  after  supper.  Cards,  tric-trac, 
and  backgammon,  which  Artois,  Lauzun,  and  Chartres,  played 
extremely  well."  This  was  that  Artois  who  goes  down  to  a 
fool's    immortality   as   the   inventor   or  possessor   of   those 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PHILANTHROPY.    1G7 

"  breeches  of  a  kind  new  in  this  world,"  into  which,  and  from 
which,  his  four  tall  lackeys  lifted  him  every  morning  and  eve- 
ning ;  and  this  Chartrcs,  who  distinguished  himself  at  tric-trac, 
became  Egalite,  and  found  it  more  difficult  to  play  another 
game.  Had  the  curtain  of  the  future  been  drawn  aside  for  a 
moment  before  the  eyes  of  the  group,  and  Philip  of  Orleans 
seen  himself  at  that  moment  when  he  stopped  before  his  own 
palace  on  his  way  to  the  guillotine,  what  astonishment,  and 
trembling,  and  dismay,  would  have  sunk  over  that  gay  com- 
pany !  He  sees  La  Fayette,  too,  and  styles  him  "  a  pleasing, 
enthusiastical  man,"  surely  with  happy  shrewdness  and  accu- 
racy. The  latter  is  already  a  patriot  of  the  most  high-flown 
description,  quite  on  the  model  of  Addison's  Cato.  The  ladies 
of  the  court  try  to  induce  him  to  join  in  cards ;  but  will  the 
classic  hero  compromise  the  austere  dignity  of  freedom  1  The 
ladies  have  to  glide  away  in  admiring  respect,  almost  in  rever- 
ence, and  the  heart  of  the  patriot  is  strengthened.  "  The  king 
is  so  strange  a  being  (of  the  hog  kind),  that  it  is  worth  going  a 
hundred  miles  for  the  sight  of  him,  especially  a  boar-hunting." 
This  was  poor  Louis,  whose  contribution  to  human  knowledge 
was  of  so  decidedly  negative  a  nature ;  who  bore  testimony  to 
this  one  doctrine,  whose  worth,  however,  deserved  to  be  writ- 
ten in  blood ;  that  nature,  in  this  world,  grants  inappreciably 
little  to  good  intentions.  He  sees  Marie  Antoinette  frequently, 
and  bears  witness  to  the  gentle  witchery  of  her  manner,  queenly 
dignity  blended  with  feminine  kmdness.  Seen  against  the 
darkness  which  we  know  lay  in  the  background,  all  this  gayly- 
tinted  picture,  of  which  Wilberforce  for  a  short  pace  formed 
an  appropriate  figure,  has  a  strange  and  fascinating  look. 
"  Light  mortals,  how  ye  walk  your  light  life-minuet,  over  bot- 
tomless abysses,  divided  from  you  by  a  film !" 

In  the  spring  of  1784,  Wilberforce  was  elected  to  represent 


168  wilberforce; 


Yorkshire.  His  popularity  in  his  native  county  was  extreme ; 
and  when,  after  the  prorogation  of  Parliament,  he  went  down 
to  spend  his  birth-day  there,  and  appeared  at  the  races,  the 
whole  era  of  his  history  which  we  now  contemplate  may  be 
said  to  have  reached  its  highest  manifestation  and  climax.  A 
running  chorus  of  applauding  shouts  followed  his  path;  he 
was  the  cynosure  of  all  eyes ;  if  vacant  stare  and  noise  could 
make  one  happy,  he  were  the  man. 

In  October,  1784,  he  left  England  on  a  journey  to  the  Con- 
tinent, in  the  company  of  Isaac  Milner,  brother  of  the  Church 
historian,  and,  though  unapt  to  show  them,  of  thoroughly  evan- 
gelical views.  A  few  serious  words'  which  dropped  from  Mil- 
ner's  lips  on  the  journey,  and  the  effect  of  a  perusal  of  Dod- 
dridge's "  Eise  and  Progress  of  Religion  in  the  Soul,"  did  not 
altogether  pass  away  from  the  mind  of  Wilberforce ;  invisibly, 
perhaps  intermittently,  yet  indestructibly,  the  disturbing  influ- 
ence acted  within.  On  his  return  to  London,  he  again  rushed 
into  the  halls  of  fashion  and  frivolity ;  now  and  then  a  moni- 
tion of  other  things  flickered  momentarily,  like  the  glance  of 
an  angel's  eye,  across  his  sphere  of  vision ;  but  he  still  con- 
tinued, with  reckless  determination,  to  drain  the  chalice  of  wild, 
unmeasured  mirth.  No  change  was  seen  in  the  external  aspect 
of  his  life :  he  frisked  about  at  Almack's,  danced  till  five  in 
the  morning,  charmed  and  fascinated  as  before ;  yet  the  moni- 
tory glance  was  at  intervals  upon  him,  the  perfect  peace  of 
death  was  broken. 

In  the  summer  of  1785,  he  had  another  Continental  tour 
with  Milner.  They  now  conversed  more  earnestly  on  the 
subject  of  religion,  and  commenced  together  the  study  of  the 
New  Testament.  The  time  at  length  had  come  from  which 
Wilberforce  was  to  date  a  new  era  in  his  life :  the  time  when 
he  was,  whether  in  delusion  or  not,  to  believe  himself  savingly 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PHILANTHROPY.    160 

inftdcnced  by  the  Spirit  of  the  Almighty,  and  to  prepare  to 
walk  onward  to  eternity  under  that  guidance. 

The  manner  of  the  change  now  wrought  in  Wilberforce  is 
of  less  importance  to  us  than  its  effects ;  but  we  must  briefly 
indicate  its  general  aspect.  In  our  minds  the  belief  is  deeply 
seated,  that  the  religious  influence  by  which  we  saw  him  im- 
pressed in  boyhood  never  totally  lost  its  effect.  Like  an  in- 
effaceable writing,  it  lay  in  his  heart  during  all  those  years 
when  the  desert  sands  of  vanity  swept  over  it,  hidden,  perhaps 
forgotten,  but  imperishably  there :  it  required  but  a  calm  hour 
and  a  strong  skillful  hand,  putting  aside  the  sand  and  revealing 
the  golden  characters,  to  bring  the  soul  of  "Wilberforce  to  ac- 
knowledge their  sacred  authority.  On  this  point,  however,  we 
do  not  insist ;  it  is  beyond  the  reach  of  positive  proof  He 
did,  at  all  events,  now  pause  in  startled  earnestness ;  the  fleet- 
ing monitions  could  no  longer  be  put  aside.  The  truths  of 
God's  word  first  forced  an  intellectual  assent ;  conscience,  after 
long  slumber,  then  awoke  in  the  might  of  its  divine  commis- 
sion, and,  like  a  heavenly  messenger  with  a  sword  of  unearthly 
fire  in  the  hand,  defied  him  to  advance  another  step.  His 
trouble  of  soul  was  long  and  terrible.  He  asserted  in  after 
years  that  he  had  never  read  of  mental  agonies  more  acute 
than  his  own ;  and  we  think  it  were  difficult  to  over-estimate 
the  weight  of  this  testimony.  Yet  it  was  not  terror  that  chiefly 
dismayed  him.  "It  was  not  so  much,"  these  are  his  own 
words,  "the  fear  of  punishment  by  which  I  was  affected,  as  a 
sense  of  my  great  sinfulness  in  having  so  long  neglected  the 
unspeakable  mercies  of  my  God  and  Saviour."  His  soul  was 
not  altogether  a  stranger  to  fear.  The  finite  being  who  begins 
to  have  a  fixed  assurance  that  there  is  not  a  relation  of  perfect 
concord  between  him  and  the  Infinite  One,  may  well  experience 
a  feeling  of  awe ;  the  man  who  hears  conscience,  with  iron 

8 


ITO  wilberforce; 

tongue,  proclaiming  that  sin  and  misery  are  as  substance  and 
shadow,  who  has  any  conception  of  the  deep,  drear,  moaning 
affirmative  of  this,  which  goes,  like  a  melancholy  Arctic  wind, 
over  all  the  centuries  of  the  life  of  mankind,  and  who  deems 
it  even  possible  that  this  Upas  root  lies  too  deep  in  his  own 
bosom  to  be  eradicated  by  mortal  hands,  may  well  be  afraid. 
The  instinct  of  the  human  race  echoes  the  Scripture  words, 
'  The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom."  But  it 
was  no  slavish  dread  which  urged  him  on.  His  was  no  longer 
the  reckless  bearing  of  a  man  of  the  world,  arising  from  va- 
cancy of  thought  or  sheer  imbecility ;  nor  did  he  change  his 
attitude  for  that  of  the  haughty  assertor  of  himself  against  the 
infinitude  of  power,  whose  position  is  surely  that  of  a  maniac 
or  demon :  but  it  was  the  light  of  celestial  holiness  burning 
eternally  around  the  throne  of  God  in  the  far  deeps  of  heaven, 
that  caught  and  fixed  his  eye,  it  was  an  awakening  conscious- 
ness of  deep  moral  wants,  that  filled  his  heart  with  yearning 
sorrow,  it  was  a  conviction  that  the  name  of  Christian  had 
been  hitherto,  in  his  case,  a  mere  vague  sound  or  hypocritio 
deception,  that  touched  him  with  hallowed  shame,  and  it  was 
dumb  amazement  at  the  fact  that  the  most  sublime  instance 
of  love  ever  given  to  this  universe  had  been  unknown  and  un- 
heeded by  him,  which  brought  him  at  last,  a  weeping  suppli- 
ant, to  the  Mount  of  Calvary. 

The  work  he  had  to  accomplish  was  of  stern  difficulty. 
That  long  course  of  noisy  vanity  had  as  it  were  deafened  and 
distracted  his  spiritual  nature  ;  fixed  thought  he  found  in  itself 
difficult ;  and  now  he  had  to  stop  and  think  as  with  his  soul  in 
his  hand.  Had  escape  been  possible,  he  would  have  escaped ; 
for  he  put  himself  at  first  in  a  firmly  defensive  attitude,  and 
turned  again  for  a  time  to  the  charmers  whose  spell  had  hith- 
erto held  him.    Consider  what  an  outlook  was  his.    By  a  thou- 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PHILANTHROPY     171 

sand  viewless  chains  he  was  bound  to  the  world.  Known  and 
adulated  in  all  the  clubs  and  London  fiishionable  circles,  re- 
joicing in  a  rising  flime  for  eloquence,  and  having  long  enjoyed 
the  still  more  delicious  fame  of  wit,  keenly  sensitive  to  every 
shaft  of  ridicule  and  intensely  relishing  applause,  the  strings 
of  his  very  heart  would  be  rent  if  he  tore  himself  away ;  while 
hardest  of  all,  he  saw  clearly  that  friendships,  to  his  tender 
nature  very  dear,  must  either  be  cast  away  altogether,  or  ar- 
range themselves  on  new  sympathies  of  a  comparatively  shal- 
low order.  But  it  was  to  be  done ;  further  he  could  not  go ; 
that  flaming  sword  of  God's  angel,  conscience,  barred  his 
way. 

In  deep  trouble  of  mind,  he  returned  to  London.  He  had 
abandoned  the  defensive  attitude ;  he  no  longer  stood  as  one 
who  could  put  a  good  face  on  the  matter,  and,  as  it  were, 
prove  to  God  that  all  was  right ;  he  had  flung  away  the  ar- 
mor in  which  he  trusted,  he  had  exchanged  complacency  for 
bitter  repentance,  defense  or  apology  for  earnest  prayers.  It 
was  not  yet  light  within,  but  outward  duty  became  plain,  and 
with  it  he  proceeded  at  once.  He  wrote  to  his  principal 
friends,  informing  them  that  he  was  not  what  he  had  been ;  he 
withdrew  his  stej^s  from  every  haunt  of  worldly  mirth ;  des- 
pite a  rising  feeling  of  shame,  he  commenced  the  worship  of 
God  as  a  householder.  He  brought  himself  also,  after  a  severe 
struggle,  to  introduce  himself  to  John  Newton,  and  thus  com- 
menced the  formation  of  a  new  circle  of  friendship. 

At  length  he  began  to  reap  his  reward ;  that  peace  which 
nas  arisen  after  toil  and  darkness  in  so  many  Christian  souls, 
and  which  is  essentially  the  same  in  all ;  that  peace  which 
came  with  returning  light  over  the  prostrate  and  trembling 
soul  of  Paul,  which  brought  healing  to  the  agonized  heart  of 
Luther,  which  was  devoutly  treasured  alike  by  Cromwell,  Ed- 


172  wilberforce; 

wards,  and  so  far  different  men  as  Brainerd  and  M'Cheyne, 
diffused  itself,  at  last,  through  the  breast  of  Wilberforce.  His 
testimony  was  soon  decisive,  that  he  had  reached  a  higher  and 
more  exquisite  joy  than  he  had  ever  known  in  the  saloons  of 
fashion ;  "  never  so  happy  in  my  life,  as  this  whole  evening," 
are  words  from  his  diary  of  the  period.  His  correspondence 
began  to  breathe  the  earnestness  of  Christian  zeal,  and  the 
serenity  of  Christian  enjoyment.  "  The  Eastern  nations,"  he 
writes  to  his  sister,  "  had  their  talismans,  which  were  to  ad- 
vertise them  of  every  danger,  and  guard  them  from  every 
mischief.  Be  the  love  of  Christ  our  talisman."  Again,  writ- 
ing on  an  Easter  Sabbath,  "  Can  my  dear  sister,"  he  exclaims, 
"  wonder  that  I  call  on  her  to  participate  in  the  pleasure  I  am 
tasting.  I  know  how  you  sympathise  in  the  happiness  of 
those  you  love,  and  I  could  not,  therefore,  forgive  myself  if  I 
were  to  keep  my  raptures  to  myself,  and  not  invite  you  to 
partake  of  my  enjoyment.  The  day  has  been  delightful.  I 
was  out  before  six,  and  made  the  fields  my  oratory,  the  sun 
shining  as  bright  and  as  warm  as  at  midsummer.  I  think  my 
own  devotions  become  more  fervent  when  offered  in  this  way, 
amid  the  general  chorus  with  which  all  nature  seems  on  such 
a  morning  to  be  swelling  the  song  of  praise  and  thanksgiving." 
He  had  nov/  deliberately  devoted  himself  to  Christ,  and  re- 
solved that  all  his  energies  should  be  dedicated  to  His  service. 

We  must  pause  for  a  moment,  to  learn  accurately  the  pre- 
cise position  of  Wilberforce  at  this  juncture,  to  know  what 
Christian  conversion  had  done  for  him,  and  to  estimate  the 
forces  at  his  command  for  serving  his  God  and  his  country. 

The  look  he  cast  over  his  past  life  was  one  of  astonishment 
and  sorrow  ;  his  feelings  were  as  those  of  a  man  who,  after  a 
night  of  intoxication  and  revelry,  is  aroused  from  a  drunken 
morning  sleep  to  brace  on  his  armor  and  go  instantly  to  meet 


AND    THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    P  U  IL  A  N  TH  RO  P  Y  .         1*73 

the  foe ;  oi  of  one  who  finds  that,  while  he  has  slept,  a  fair 
wind  has  been  lost,  and  the  tide  is  gone  far  backward,  and  he 
will  never  by  utmost  diligence  make  now  a  good  voyage.  He 
was  twenty-six  years  of  age.  His  life,  since  his  twelfth  year, 
had  been  one  course  of  mental  dissipation ;  his  intellect,  natu- 
rally alert,  had  been  abandoned  to  utter  volatility ;  he  stood 
appalled,  and  well-nigh  powerless.  Had  his  will  been  roused 
to  a  giant  energy — had  he  collected  all  his  faculties  for  one 
determined  struggle — had  he,  calculating  that,  to  attain  the 
mental  power  and  material  which  a  true  education  might  have 
at  that  epoch  realized  for  him,  a  space  of  ten  or  at  least  five 
years  of  stern,  unmitigated,  silent  toil  was  absolutely  required, 
deliberately  given  that  period  to  the  task,  and  performed  it, 
it  is  impossible  to  say  what  he  might  have  been,  or  what  work 
he  might  have  effected.  But  he  made  no  such  grand  effort : 
life  was  so  far  advanced  that  he  did  not  dare  to  withdraw  his 
hand  for  a  moment  from  work ;  he  does  not  seem  to  have 
even  formed  the  conception  of  what,  as  to  us  is  suffipiently 
plain,  was  absolutely  necessary. 

We  do  not  blame  Wilberforce  in  this  matter  ;  but  it  is  re- 
quisite for  us  to  be  thus  explicit,  that  it  may  be  distinctly  un- 
derstood what  it  is  we  conceive  him  to  have  been,  and  what 
we  believe  he  was  not.  He  can  in  no  sense  be  regarded  as  the 
Christian  statesman  of  our  era.  The  modern  Christian  states- 
man, indeed,  has  not  yet  appeared.  For,  by  statesman,  we 
can  not  be  supposed  to  mean  simply  member  of  Parliament : 
we  must  mean  one  who  exerts  so  much  power  in  the  political 
world,  that  the  general  aspect  of  affairs  is  colored  by  his  influ- 
ence, the  attitude  of  his  country  among  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world  that  which  he,  at  least  in  a  large  measure,  has  appointed. 
The  Christian  statesman  will  be  he  who  can  impart  to  Britain 
once  more  the  aspect  of  a  great,  free,  Protestant  nation  ;  who, 


174  wilberforce; 

in  the  nineteenth  century,  will  bring  Christianity  into  politics, 
and,  helming  the  state  with  the  strong  arm  of  a  Cromwell, 
make  it  apparent  to  all  nations  that  he  holds  his  commission, 
as  governor,  from  God  ;  who  will  gather  around  him  that  deep 
and  ancient  sympathy  with  vital  Christianity  which  does  exist 
in  these  lands,  who  will  combine  it  with  the  science  and  adapt 
it  to  the  conditions  of  the  time,  and  make  the  flag  of  England 
once  more  not  the  mere  symbol  of  commercial  wealth  or 
military  renown,  but  the  standard  of  Christian  civilization, 
and  a  beacon  to  every  people  that  will  be  free.  The  ulti- 
mate perfection  of  civilization  is  an  enlightened  and  godly 
freedom. 

But  our  words,  we  fancy  some  reader  conceiving,  become 
visionary,  express  mere  vague  enthusiasm,  or  Utopian  dreams. 
Is  it  really  so  ?  Have  we  tacitly  come  to  the  conclusion  and 
agreement  that  Christianity,  that  Protestantism,  is  to  be  per- 
mitted indeed  to  exert  what  power  it  can  in  subordinate 
spheres,  but,  in  its  distinctive  character,  is  no  more  to  be  ad- 
mitted into  the  councils  of  nations  1  Have  we  consented  that 
Britain,  when  dealing  with  other  kingdoms,  shall  indeed  speak, 
and  with  resistless  power,  as  a  commercial,  a  military,  a  colo- 
nizing nation,  but  have  no  word  to  say  as  a  Christian  nation  ?  It 
may  be  so ;  but  let  us  perceive  clearly  what  we  imply  by  the 
concession.  We  imply  that  nations,  as  such,  are  exempted 
from  the  ordinance  of  glorifying  God  ;  that,  in  this  important 
respect,  they  form  an  absolute  solecism  in  the  universe.  For 
our  own  part,  we  can  not  believe  it ;  we  can  not  but  be  pro- 
foundly assured  that  nations  are  intended,  we  say  not  in  wbnt 
precise  way,  but  at  least  in  their  distinctive  character,  to  bear 
a  part  in  the  universal  harmony  of  the  universal  choir  that 
hymr.sthe  Creator's  praise  ;  we  can  not  but  believe  that  some- 
thing more  vital  than  political  morality,  more  nobly  human 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PHILANTHROPY.    175 

than  desire  of  national  wealth,  more  lofty  even  than  what  is 
far  higher  than  these,  martial  honor,  must  one  day  again  pene- 
trate the  senates  and  privy  councils  of  the  world ;  it  is  with 
sorrow  and  shame  that  we  regard  the  flict,  that,  since  the  days 
of  Cromwell,  there  has  been  no  leader  of  the  British  nation,  no 
Pitt,  no  Fox,  no  Wellington,  of  whom  you  can  say  that,  as  a 
statesman,  he  was  Christian.  Wilberforce  was  a  Christian 
member  of  Parliament ;  it  may  even  be  alleged  that  he  did,  to 
some  perceptible  extent,  introduce  Christianity  into  the  councils 
of  Great  Britain ;  but  the  Christian  statesman  of  the  modern 
epoch  he  certainly  was  not. 

The  power  of  vital  godliness  did  all  for  Wilberforce  that 
was,  perhaps,  without  a  miracle,  possible ;  it  did  not  create 
within  him  new  powers,  it  did  not  convey  supernaturally  into 
his  mind  new  and  sufficient  stores  of  knowledge ;  but  it  did 
much,  it  did  more,  we  may  confidently  say,  than  any  other 
conceivable  power  could  have  done.  What  that  was,  we  go 
on  to  show. 

Light,  frivolous,  fascinating,  Wilberforce  made  a  narrow 
escape  from  beiug  a  character  of  a  sort  which  is  surely  one  of 
the  most  pitiful  human  life  can  show — a  fashionable  wit  and 
jester.  How  profoundly  melancholy  is  the  spectacle  of  a  man, 
the  main  tenor  of  whose  life  is  an  empty  giggle  and  crackle  of 
fool's  laughter  !  How  ghastly,  afler  it  is  all  past,  does  the 
perpetual  smirking  and  smartness  of  such  men  as  Theodore 
Hook  and  Sydney  Smith  really  appear  !  Wilberforce  could 
vie  with  these  in  powers  of  entertaining  and  being  entertained ; 
his  whole  training,  with  one  slight  exception,  tended  to  foster 
these  powers ;  and  now  they  had  found  their  sphere,  and  passed 
their  probation.  In  politics,  his  position  promised  little  better. 
With  powers  of  natural  eloquence  which  drew  unmeasured 
applause  from  such  men  as  Burke  and  Pitt,  with  great  quick- 


lYd  wilberforce; 

ness  of  memory,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  of  arrangement, 
with  a  judgment  naturally  clear  and  strong,  and  with  a  heart 
■which  would  not  swerve  from  the  path  of  a  rough  genuine 
English  honor,  he  had  certainly  reached  a  conspicuous  station 
as  a  supporter  of  Pitt,  and  could  speak  a  distinct,  independent, 
and  valuable  word  on  most  subjects  ;  yet  he  himself  records, 
that  his  political  life  was  then  without  unity,  that  he  "  wanted 
first  principles,"  that  his  own  distinction  was  his  "  darling  ob- 
ject." We  can  not  but  agree  with  him  when  he  says,  "  The 
first  years  that  I  was  in  Parliament  I  did  nothing — nothing,  I 
mean,  to  any  good  purpose." 

Both  as  man  and  as  politician,  he  was  now  changed.  The 
flickering  light  of  vacant  and  aimless  mirth  faded  from  his  lip 
and  eye,  the  sacred  energy  of  Christian  purpose  began  to  mold 
and  brighten  his  features  ;  if  there  was  still  somewhat  of  rest- 
lessness and  unsteadied  vehemence  in  his  look,  it  had  one  point 
toward  which  it  always  turned,  and  its  natural  kindness  was 
gradually  deepened  and  sublimed  into  the  holier  warmth  of 
Christian  love.  As  a  politician,  he  reached  a  new  independ- 
ence and  individuality.  He  could  no  longer  wheel  round  in 
the  circle  of  party  ;  he  could  no  longer,  even  to  a  limited  ex- 
tent, take  his  opinions  in  the  mass  from  the  faction  to  which  he 
belonged ;  he  told  Pitt  he  would  still  support  him  where  he 
could,  but  that  he  was  no  longer  to  be  a  party  man,  even  to 
the  same  extent  as  heretofore.  He  looked  out  for  a  work  of 
his  own,  for  something  which  he  might  do  as  one  whose  char- 
acter was  in  all  things  professedly  Christian,  and  who  believed 
that  it  was  as  God's  servant  alone  that  he  could  take  a  share  in 
the  government  of  Britain.  For  this  work,  whatever  it  might 
be,  he  lost  no  time  in  preparing  himself.  He  instantly  set 
about  the  task  of  concentrating  his  faculties,  and  enriching  his 
intellectual  stores ;  he  turned  to  study  with  an  earnestness  he 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OP  PHILANTHROPY.    l77 

had  never  hitherto  known  ;  above  all,  he  commenced  the 
careful  and  unlntermitted  study  of  Holy  Writ.  This  last  wc 
agree  with  his  biographers  in  considering  the  most  important 
element  in  his  new  mental  discipline.  The  power  of  the  Chris- 
tian Scriptures  to  engage,  to  train,  and  to  occupy  the  intellect, 
has  been  attested  in  express  and  emphatic  terms  by  such  think- 
ers as  Jonathan  Edwards  and  Lcssing. 

Wilberforce  did  not  wait  long  ere  he  found  his  work.  It 
was  twofold.  On  Sunday,  the  28th  of  October,  1787,  ho  wrote 
these  words  in  his  journal :  "  God  Almighty  has  set  before  me 
two  great  objects,  the  suppression  of  the  slave  trade,  and  the 
reformation  of  manners."  With  solemn  yet  courageous  earnest- 
ness, he  assayed  these  august  achievements ;  he  had  already 
counted  the  forces  against  him  in  his  public  and  private  Chris- 
tian walk ;  but  after  looking  them  full  in  the  face,  this  had 
been  his  conclusion  :  "  But  then  we  have  God  and  Christ  on 
our  side  ;  we  have  heavenly  armor ;  the  crown  is  everlasting 
life,  and  the  struggle  how  short,  compared  with  the  eternity 
which  follows  it !  Yet  a  little  while,  and  He  that  shall  come 
will  come,  and  will  not  tarry." 

It  is  with  Wilberforce,  in  his  connection  with  those  two 
movements,  the  first  of  which  resulted  in  the  emancipation  of  the 
slaves  in  the  British  colonies,  and  the  second  of  which  devel- 
oped into  what  is  called  Exeter  Hall  Philanthropy,  that  we  are 
mainly  concerned.  The  part,  indeed,  which  he  individually 
bore  in  each  is  of  comparatively  slight  importance ;  it  we  can 
briefly  indicate  in  the  outset  of  our  remarks  on  the  respective 
subjects.  But  it  were  well,  if  such  might  be  possible,  to  reach 
a  conclusive  estimate  at  once  of  the  value  of  the  great  meas- 
ures of  Abolition  of  the  Slave  Trade,  and  Slave  Emancipation, 
and  of  the  part  Christianity  bore  in  their  attainment ;  while 
the  class  of  kindied  phenomena,  which  we  include  in  the  gen- 
8* 


1Y8  WILBERFORCE  ; 

eral  designation  of  philanthropic  efforts  for  the  reformation  of 
manners,  are  those  with  which  we  are  at  present  more  particu- 
larly engaged. 

Of  the  particular  method  in  which  Wilberforce  led  the  con- 
test against  the  Slave  Trade,  and  of  the  various  stages  of  that 
contest,  we  deem  it  unnecessary  to  speak.  His  task  can  not 
be  alleged  to  have  been  of  a  severity  demanding  the  highest 
efforts  of  courage  and  endurance,  or  whose  performance  called 
forth  special  heroism.  That  he  did  encounter  obloquy  and 
scorn,  that  he  did  undergo  heavy  and  protracted  labor,  is  cer- 
tain ;  that,  from  year  to  year,  he  stood  forth  with  the  calm  de- 
termination of  one  who  had  a  great  work  to  do,  and  who  would 
do  it  with  English  courage,  sagacity  and  perseverance,  is  unde- 
niable ;  that,  in  the  whole  course  of  his  operations,  he  earned 
that  substantial  applause  which  is  the  meed  of  every  man  who 
performs  well  and  completely  the  duty  which  he  regards  him- 
self commissioned  of  God  to  accomplish,  no  one  can  question. 
But  we  claim  for  him  no  higher  honor  than  this  :  our  opinion 
here  is  substantially  the  same  as  that  of  Sir  James  Stephen. 
His  sphere  of  exertion,  whatever  its  inconveniences  or  occa- 
sional troubles,  was,  on  the  whole,  one  of  honor  and  ease; 
failure  brought  no  danger  or  biting  disgrace,  and,  from  the  civ- 
ilized world,  voices  were  raised  to  cheer  and  aj^plaud  him ;  it 
was  worthy  and  honorable  to  struggle  and  conquer  as  he  did, 
but  the  fact  of  his  having  done  so,  can  never  be  such  a  testi- 
mony to  character,  as  similar  exertions  were  in  the  case  of 
men  who  worked  in  the  gleam  of  half  a  world's  indignation, 
and,  for  one  stern  enemy,  had  always  to  look  into  the  eyes  of 
death. 

It  was  in  1789  that  he  delivered  his  first  regular  speech  on 
the  Slave  Trade.  Even  when  we  have  made  allowance  for  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  moment,  we  must  conclude  that  the  opinions 


AND    THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    PHILANTHROPY.         1*79 

expressed  of  this  performance  by  Burke  and  Bishop  Porteus, 
prove  Wilberforce  to  have  been  a  man  of  great  natural  elo- 
quence, and  of  rich  and  vigorous  mind.  "  The  House,  the  na- 
tion, and  Europe,"  according  to  Burke,  "  were  under  great  and 
serious  obligations  to  the  honorable  gentleman  for  having 
brought  forward  the  subject  in  a  manner  the  most  masterly, 
impressive,  and  eloquent.  The  principles  were  so  well  laid 
down,  and  supported  with  so  much  force  and  order,  that 
it  equaled  any  thing  he  had  heard  in  modern  times,  and  was 
not  perhaps  to  be  surpassed  in  the  remains  of  Grecian  elo- 
quence." Porteus  styles  it  "  one  of  the  ablest  and  most  elo- 
quent speeches  that  was  ever  heard."  It  lasted  three  hours. 
Its  effect  was  to  bear  the  House,  with  astonishing  unanimity, 
along  with  the  speaker.  On  the  whole,  we  must  regard  it  a 
conclusive  proof  that  Wilberforce  possessed  popular  talents 
of  a  high  order.  In  1807,  after  many  a  galling  disappointment, 
his  eflbrts  were  finally  crowned  with  success.  Congratulations 
poured  in  upon  him  from  all  parts  of  the  world ;  but  while 
drinking  deeply  of  the  joy  which  rewarded  his  toil,  he  aban- 
doned every  claim  to  honor  for  himself;  all  pride  was  swal- 
lowed up  in  thankfulness.  "  Oh  what  thanks  do  I  owe  to  the 
Giver  of  all  good,  for  bringing  me  in  His  gracious  Providence 
to  this  great  cause,  which  at  length,  after  almost  nineteen  years' 
labor,  is  successful !"  These  are  the  words  of  a  true  Christian 
soldier:  their  humility  and  silent  earnestness,  amid  the  ap- 
plause of  millions,  are  surely  beautiful.  He  lived  to  see  a  still 
'reater  day.  When  he  retired  from  political  strife,  the  stan- 
dard he  had  so  long  borne  was  held  aloft  by  Buxton  and  oth- 
ers ;  with  deep  emphasis  did  he  again  thank  God,  when,  in 
1833,  Britain  emancipated  her  slaves. 

Concerning  this  whole  work  of  slave  emancipation,  we  have 
now  heard  the  two  extremes  of  opinion.     For  a  time,  and  a 


180  wilberforce; 

long  time,  it  seemed  to  be  a  subject  on  which  men  were  at  last 
agreed ;  a  universal  p^an  arose  around  it,  and  continued  to  be 
chanted  on  all  platforms,  in  all  newspapers,  in  all  schools  of 
rhetoric  and  poetry.  But,  after  a  time,  there  exhibited  itself 
a  disposition  to  question  the  advisability  and  intrinsic  excel- 
lence of  the  measures,  and  at  length  a  strong  revulsion  of  feel- 
ing had  taken  place  in  certain  quarters.  Mr.  Carlyle  has 
poured  the  chalice  of  his  scorn,  comparable  to  molten  iron,  on 
Britain's  whole  dealing  with  the  Negroes  of  her  colonies,  and, 
wherever  his  influence  is  paramount,  a  disposition  to  denounce 
the  proceedings  of  the  advocates  of  abolition  and  emancipation 
manifests  itself. 

The  paeans  were  certainly,  we  think,  struck  on  too  high  a 
key.  The  stern  and  numerous  difficulties  which  have  since  re- 
vealed themselves  cast  no  shadow  before ;  that  one  grand,  all- 
comprehending  difficulty  of  making  men  free^  implying,  as  it 
does,  such  an  elevation  of  nature,  such  a  raising  above  sensu- 
ality, sloth,  and  foolishness,  into  industry,  self-respect,  and  wis- 
dom, as  only  a  Divine  hand  could  at  once  effect,  was  not  then 
conceived  of;  it  did  not  strike  men  that,  if  they  destroyed 
Sodom,  they  might  have  in  its  place  only  a  Dead  Sea.  Yet, 
after  all,  we  are  disposed  to  say  that  the  plaudits  had  more 
reason  in  them  than  the  denunciations.  There  is  something 
wholesome  and  inspiring  in  the  sound  of  human  rejoicing  over 
wrong  and  iniquity  even  believed  to  be  overthrown ;  but,  on 
the  other  side,  the  vituperation,  when  all  is  well  looked  into, 
turns  out  to  have  little  more  on  which  to  support  itself,  than 
the  old  fact,  whose  truth  we  must  so  often  acknowledge  and 
put  up  with,  that  human  affairs  are  not  ideal,  that  human  in- 
tellects are  indubitably  bounded.  We  shall  endeavor  to  strike 
the  truth  between  the  opposing  views. 

Slave  emancipation,  then,  of  which  we  consider  the  abolition 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PHILANTHROPY.    .81 

of  the  Slave  Trade  a  part,  we  regard  as  a  great  initial  measure, 
which  did  not  exhaust  the  case,  which  did  not  even  proceed  far 
with  it,  which  can  not  be  said  to  have  touched  certain  of  its 
greatest  and  most  strictly  original  difficulties,  but  which  cleared 
the  ground  for  its  possible  discussion,  fixed  the  imperative  con- 
ditions of  the  problem,  and  laid  down  the  fundamental  axioms 
by  which  it  must  be  solved.  It  cleared  the  atmosphere  round 
the  whole  subject ;  its  very  excess,  if  such  there  was,  the  very- 
fact  of  its  abstaining  from  any  tempering  or  temporizing  ex- 
pedients, but  attempting  to  break,  as  by  one  sledge-hammer 
blow,  the  slave-chain  that  it  abhorred,  made  its  teaching  of 
certain  great  first  principles  the  more  emphatic.  These  may, 
we  think,  be  briefly  recounted ;  they  seem  to  range  themselves 
under  two  heads. 

The  first  great  truth  it  declared  was  none  other  than  that  of 
which  we  have  already  spoken,  and  on  which  we  shall  not  here 
again  enlarge :  That  an  essential  equality  subsists  among  all 
the  members  of  the  human  family.  It  was  the  second  great 
assertion  by  Christian  Philanthropy  of  this  fundamental  princi- 
ple: Howard's  work  in  the  prisons  of  the  world  was  the 
first. 

Slavery,  in  its  essential  nature,  is  precisely  that  which  puts 
man  individually  in  the  stead  of  God,  as  the  ultimate  source  of 
authority  regarding  a  human  being.  Hence  is  at  once  obvious 
the  error  of  those  who,  pointing  to  the  subordination  of  class 
to  class,  and  such  other  arrangements  of  society  as  restrain 
and  circumvent  every  man  in  every  sphere,  exclaim  that  slave- 
ry can  not  be  abolished.  From  the  laws  of  society,  in  some 
form  or  other,  we  can  not  escape ;  but,  whatever  their  imper- 
fections, we  must  look  at  society  as  originally  an  ordinance  of 
God,  enforced  by  a  necessity  of  nature,  and,  with  whatever 
subordinate  disadvantages  and  difficulties,   conducing  toward 


182  wilberforce; 

the  very  highest  and  noblest  results  for  the  individual  and  the 
race ;  no  man,  therefore,  is  a  slave,  however  hard  he  toils,  how- 
ever ill  he  fares,  in  simply  conforming  to  them.  But  what- 
ever negatives  the  action  of  the  powers  with  which  God  has 
gifted  a  man,  and  which  he  holds  from  Him,  is  of  the  nature 
of  slavery ;  and  thus,  indeed,  every  social  imperfection  involv- 
ing injustice  and  partiality,  is  more  or  less  allied  to  it ;  when 
a  man  is  bought  and  sold  as  a  chattel  or  animal,  the  action  of 
those  powers  may  be  said  to  be  negatived  altogether.  Thus, 
too  we  see  that  a  man  who  is  vitally  a  Christian  can  not  be 
totally  a  slave ;  he  is  Christ's  freed-man  ;  there  is  a  region  in 
his  heart  which  he  deliberately  regards  as  exempt  from  the 
control  of  his  earthly  master,  a  point  in  which,  should  he  com- 
mand him,  he  will  not  obey,  but,  if  it  must  be,  die — a  free- 
man. 

The  second  lesson  which  these  legislative  measures  read  to 
the  world  was  this :  That  Mammon  was  not  the  ultimate  au- 
thority in  this  question  ;  that,  though  the  pecuniary  loss  were 
of  indefinite  amount,  there  were  other  considerations,  of  jus- 
tice and  humanity,  which  would  overtop  them,  and  that  in- 
finitely. It  was  as  if  Mammon  and  Justice  had  been  pitted 
against  each  other,  with  the  v,^orld  for  an  arena;  Mammon 
pointed  to  these  souls  of  men,  said  they  represented  gold,  and 
declared  that  the  smoke  of  their  torment  would  blacken  the 
dome  of  Heaven  ere  he  let  them  from  beneath  his  sway ;  Jus- 
tice flung  to  him  twenty  millions,  and  bade  him,  with  a  con- 
temptuous smile,  relax  his  hold.  By  whatever  law  the  ques- 
tions connected  with  the  Negro  race  were  to  be  ultimately 
settled,  it  was  not  to  be  a  consideration  in  the  case,  how  they 
would  realize  the  greatest  pecuniary  profit  for  white  men;  the 
general  principle  was  emphatically  enounced,  that,  whatever  of 
wealth  or  luxury  a  man  may  extract  from  any  portion  of  the 


AND    THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF   P  U  I  L  A  N  Til  R  O  P  Y.        183 

earth,  by  making  his  fellow-man  the  tool  for  its  attainment, 
th:s  method  is  one  essentially  unjust,  and  on  no  conceivable 
hypothesis  to  be  defended. 

On  the  M'hole,  then,  we  must  pronounce  the  value  of  these 
measures  great,  although  the  present  state  of  our  West  Indian 
Colonies  is  as  it  is.  Of  the  melancholy  aspect  they  present, 
we  entertain  so  profound  an  idea,  that  we  can  hardly  trust 
ourselves  to  express  it.  Perhaps,  fairly  and  fully  considered, 
our  legislation  on  subjects  touching  these  colonies  since  the 
measure  of  1833,  is  the  most  fatuous,  contradictory,  mean,  and 
feeble,  that  ever  had  existence.  If  it  had  been  the  wish  of 
Britain  to  stultify  or  abjure  her  own  former  acts,  and  if  she  had 
desired,  by  deliberate  national  hypocrisy,  to  change  the  form, 
but,  perhaps,  increase  the  virulence  of  her  cruelty  to  the  Ne- 
gro race,  she  could  not,  by  conceivable  possibility,  have  suc- 
ceeded better  than  she  has. 

To  one  fairly  beyond  the  circle  of  political  intrigue  and  blind 
interest,  who  casts  an  earnest  glance  over  the  relation  of  Brit- 
ain to  her  Western  Islands  since  the  Emancipation  Act,  the 
whole  matter  seems  to  beam  out  in  perfect  clearness.  We 
have  reflected  somewhat  upon  the  subject,  and  shall  venture  a 
few  suggestions  toward  defining  the  duty  of  Britain  to  those 
Negroes  with  whom  she  is  connected. 

First  of  all,  it  is  necessary  that  we  have  a  new  Emancipa- 
tion Act.  We  speak  with  perfect  deliberation.  It  is  neces- 
sary for  us  to  emancipate  our  slaves  in  Cuba,  the  Brazils,  and 
America.  With  a  look  of  magnanimity,  justice,  and  love, 
Britain  unchained  her  slaves :  with  a  superb  generosit}^,  she 
paid  down  twenty  millions,  and  washed  from  her  hands  the 
stain  of  blood.  The  nations  of  the  earth  looked  on  in  admira- 
tion ;  from  the  four  corners  of  the  world  came  shouts  of  ap- 
plause.    It  seemed  indubitable  that  it  had  been  an  act  of  jus. 


184  WILBERFORCE  ; 

tice  and  humanity  to  the  Negro.  But  the  plaudits  were  pre- 
mature. If  appearances  could  be  trusted,  it  was  not  the  Negro 
but  herself  Britain  had  spared.  She  laid  down  her  own  whip, 
but,  whether  in  imbecility  or  sentimentality,  again  took  it  up, 
loaded  it  afresh,  and  put  it  into  the  hand  of  the  Spaniard  or 
American.  There  are  two  ways  of  keeping  a  slave ;  either  by 
feeding  and  lodging  him  that  he  may  till  your  own  ground,  or 
paying  another  certain  moneys  for  keeping  and  working  him, 
Britain  emancipated  the  West  Indian  slaves :  the  sugar  pro- 
duce of  her  colonies  declined ;  she  opened  or  kept  open  her 
markets  to  slave-grown  sugar ;  precisely  the  quantity  of  sugar 
she  could  not  receive  from  the  West  Indies,  she  received  from 
Cuba  and  the  Brazils.  What  occasioned  the  diminution  of 
sugar  in  the  British  Colonies  ?  Tlie  diminution  of  toil  bearing 
on  the  slave.  What  enabled  the  other  slave-holding  sugar-lands 
to  increase  their  produce,  so  as  to  meet  the  new  demand  of  the 
British  market  ?  One  of  two  things,  or  both,  exhaust  the  pos- 
sibilities of  the  case :  addition  to  the  number  of  slaves,  or  an 
increase  of  toil,  imposed  on  slaves  already  possessed,  exactly 
equivalent  to  the  diminution  of  work  in  the  British  plantations. 
We  are  not  here,  reader,  laying  down  any  thing  difficult  or  ab- 
struse ;  we  are  not  even  arguing ;  we  are  expressing  an.  abso- 
lute common-place ;  we  defy  any  man,  who  has  ever  read  a 
book  or  reflected  an  hour  on  political  economy,  to  question 
what  we  state.  By  the  continual  communication  of  all  parts 
of  the  commercial  world,  by  an  action  and  reaction  inevitable 
and  speedy,  when  you  have  any  article  of  commerce  for  which 
there  is  a  known  and  steady  demand,  the  withdrawal  of  a  body 
of  laborers  from  one  field  where  it  is  produced  will  occasion 
their  addition  in  another  field.  When  Britian  set  free  her 
Negroes  in  the  AVest  Indies,  and  still  kept  open  her  market  to 
slave-growing  sugar,  she  simply  appointed  a  set  of  Spanish  or 


AND    THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    PHILANTHROPY.         185 

Brazilian  overseers  to  starve,  to  lash,  and  to  murder  her  slaves. 
It  was  by  the  laws  of  commerce  impossible  for  her  really  to 
emancipate  a  body  of  slaves  equal  in  number  to  those  employed 
in  her  colonies,  to  withdraw  her  contingent  from  the  slave- 
chain  of  the  world,  in  any  but  one  way — ^by  closing  her  mar- 
kets to  all  slave-grown  sugar.  By  any  other  expedient,  she 
simply  exchanged  one  body  of  slaves  for  another.  The  Emanci- 
pation Act  was  noble  in  intent,  fine  in  example,  and  beautiful 
as  a  proof  of  national  generosity  ;  but  in  mitigating  the  woes 
of  the  Negro  race,  considered  as  a  whole,  it  was  then,  and  has 
since  been,  null,  and  worse.  We  appeal  to  any  political  econo- 
mist in  the  British  Empire,  whether  this  conclusion  is  not  a 
mathematical  certainty. 

When  we  consider  the  amount  of  injustice,  of  useless,  sense- 
less, gross  injustice,  inflicted  on  our  colonies  in  this  business — 
when  we  think  of  the  state  of  those  glorious  islands  flung  to 
rot  there  on  the  ocean,  while  Britain,  like  an  insane  beldame, 
cherished  elsewhere  that  for  which  she  had  ruined  them — we 
can  say  only,  in  sickness  of  heart,  that  it  is  unspeakable.  Mr. 
Carlyle  rails  at  the  "  Dismal  Science ;"  but  we  can  not  cease  to 
lament,  despite  his  scorn,  that  there  was  not  even  that  faint 
knowledge  of  the  simplest  laws  of  the  commercial  system  of 
the  world  in  the  public  mind  of  Britain,  which  would  have 
saved  us  this  humiliating  state  of  affairs. 

Let  all  who  desire  Slave  Emancipation  rally  to  one  cry,  and 
demand  one  measure,  The  exclusion  of  slave-grown  produce 
from  the  British  Isles.  We  have  no  choice,  if  we  would  do 
any  thing,  beyond  this  ;  keep  your  market  open,  and  your  num- 
ber of  slaves  is  ihe  same.  India  may  give  us  cotton  ;  our  own 
islands,  if  rightly  managed,  will  give  us  enough  of  sugar  :  but, 
however  we  do,  there  is  now  blood  on  our  hands — blood  most 
cruelly,  most  inhumanly  shec     As  matters  stand,  all  our  abol- 


186  wilberforce; 

ition  lecturing  will  not  abate  the  minutest  particle  of  slavery  ; 
if  we  have  the  national  heroism  to  pass  the  above  measure,  we 
may  entertaii  a  good  hope  of  giving  slavery  its  death-blow 
over  the  world. 

Let  no  one  here  desecrate  the  name  of  Free  Trade,  by  mak- 
ing it  a  plea  for  oppression  and  iniquity.  It  is  not  a  ques- 
tion either  of  free  trade  or  protection  ;  it  is  simply  whether  we 
are  to  have  slaves  or  no :  we  can  emancipate  them  only  in  one 
way. 

But  we  turn  now  to  the  Negroes  in  our  Indian  Colonies. 
Were  the  great  measure  passed  which  we  have  specified,  there 
would  be  hope  for  them ;  while  matters  are  as  they  stand,  we 
can  hardly  entertain  any.  The  only  admissible  mode  of  pro- 
cedure, however,  seems  simple  enough.  While  recognized,  in 
an  unqualified  sense,  as  our  fellow-subjects,  Negroes  must 
certainly  be  taught  to  imbibe  habits  of  industry  worthy  of 
British  citizens.  It  is  competent  for  every  government,  in  a 
mild  but  resolute  manner,  to  put  in  force  the  ancient  rule,  that 
he  who  does  not  work  shall  not  eat.  As  Mr.  Carlyle  says 
truly,  the  Negro  has  no  right  to  run  riot  in  idleness,  and  live 
on  soil  w^hich  British  valor,  at  least  in  one  sense,  won,  without 
paying  a  fair  price  for  it :  no  British  subject  has  such  a  right, 
and  he  can  plead  no  allowable  privilege.  This  is  the  first  step 
which  renders  an  industrial  education  practicable.  A  whole 
system  of  such  education  might  gradually  arise,  and,  by  a  na- 
tural, easy,  and  benign  process,  a  free  and  industrious,  a  health- 
ful and  joyous  colored  population  might  again  make  these 
islands  like  polished  and  glittering  gems  on  the  breast  of 
ocean. 

And  it  is  our  decided  opinion  that  there  might,  with  the  best 
effects,  be  an  importation  from  Africa  of  free  blacks  into  the 
West  Indies.     Mr.  Carlyle's  argument  against  this  is  singular. 


AND    THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    P  H  I  L  A  NTU  R  O  P  Y  .        187 

It  proceeds  on  the  hypothesis  that,  because  something  is  re- 
quired to  bo  done  in  measure,  it  will  be  done  in  hideous  and 
probably  impossible  excess.  Ireland,  such  is  his  reasoning, 
does,  or  did  suffer  from,  too  large  a  population ;  the  West 
Indian  Islands  suffer  from  one  by  much  too  small:  there- 
fore, if  you  introduce  more  men  into  the  West  Indies,  you 
make  it  a  black  Ireland.  Under  which  form  of  the  syllogism 
is  this  to  be  ranged  1  The  case  is  rendered  the  more  absurd  by 
the  fact  that,  since  the  project  in  question  has  reference  solely 
to  Blacks  who  would  voluntarily  push  their  fortune  in  the 
West  Indies,  the  great  danger  would  be,  that  the  influx  would 
stop  far  too  soon.  The  Dismal  Science  could  have  given  Mr. 
Carlyle  a  hint  here  too. 

But  what  errors  soever  we  have  fallen  into  since  the  measure 
for  the  emancipation  of  our  West  Indian  slaves  was  passed, 
and  how  ineffectual  soever  the  ignorance  of  its  framers  may 
have  rendered  that  measure  itself,  its  value  as  a  national  act 
was  not  lost.  To  the  principles  we  have  stated,  it  did  testify ; 
Britain  did,  to  the  best  of  her  knowledge,  free  her  bondmen ; 
and  if  it  is  now  found  to  be  an  undeniable  fact,  that  her  knowl- 
edge was  so  defective  that  her  attempt,  instead  of  being  an  alle- 
viation of  the  miseries  of  the  negro  race  as  a  whole,  was,  strictly 
speaking,  the  reverse,  let  us  hope  the  cause  of  real  Slave 
Emancipation  may  again  meet  a  response  in  British  generosity, 
humanity,  and  valor,  and  again  find  Christian  champions  like 
Clarkson,  Buxton,  and  Wilberforce. 

There  has  been  not  a  little  discussion  as  to  the  respectiv 
exertions  of  Clarkson,  Wilberforce,  and  others,  in  the  attain- 
ment of  their  common  object.  To  this  controversy  we  shall 
contribute  not  one  word.  We  saw  that  Wilberforce  accepted, 
as  part  of  the  work  appointed  him  by  God,  the  conduct  of  the 
struggle  for  the  abolition,  and  we  saw  him,  when  the  Slave 


188  wilberforce; 

Trade  was  no  morej  devoutly  thanking  God  for  having  honored 
him  to  bear  his  part  in  the  work.  But,  in  what  shares  soever 
the  trophies  of  the  victory  be  distributed  to  individuals,  it  is 
just  to  claim  the  whole  achievement  as  a  triumph  of  Chris- 
tianity. Ramsay,  whose  book,  published  toward  the  close  of 
the  last  century,  was  the  prelude  to  the  agitation,  was  a  Chris- 
tian pastor ;  Clarkson  and  Wilberforce  both  toiled  under  the 
direct  commission  of  Christian  love.  To  such  an  extent,  Chris- 
tianity did  color  our  national  councils.  In  the  former  century,  the 
love  of  the  Gospel  had  shed  its  mild  light  in  the  dungeon  ;  it  now 
-spoke  an  emphatic  word  against  slavery,  a  word  which,  however 
little  it  may  have  yet  availed,  will  assuredly  not  die  away  until 
that  foul  stain  of  shame  and  guilt  is  wiped  from  the  brow  of  hu- 
manity. All  that  was  of  real  value  in  the  measure  was  its  tes- 
timony, on  the  part  of  the  first  nation  in  the  world,  to  justice  and 
love :  that  testimony  was  priceless ;  and  it  was  the  might  of 
Christianity  which  drew  it  forth.  What  was  defective  and  neu- 
tralizing in  its  provisions  was  unseen  by  all ;  the  divine  prin- 
ciples which  acted  in  its  attainment  were  perfectly  independent 
of  that ;  all  the  world,  as  well  as  its  Christian  movers,  thought  it 
was  a  real  emancipation,  and  not  an  exchange.  But  every  noble 
mind,  every  heart  touched  with  poetic  fire  or  raised  by  philo- 
sophic ardor,  hailed  it  with  instant  and  exultant  applause.  Cow- 
per,  Coleridge,  Byron,  Schlegel,  Fichte,  and  a  list  of  such,  em- 
bracing, with  probably  not  a  solitary  exception,  all  the  greatness 
and  nobleness  of  the  close  of  last  century  and  the  commencement 
of  this,  declared  Slave  Emancipation  to  be  a  high  and  glorious 
aim  and  achievement ;  Mr.  Carlyle  was,  we  think,  the  very  first 
man  of  genius  and  nobleness,  both  unquestioned,  to  hint  a 
doubt  regarding  the  fundamental  principles  which  animated 
Clarkson  and  Wilberforce.  And  whatever  scorn  or  gratuitous 
insulting  pity  may  accompany  her  path,  we  accept  it  as  an 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  P  HIL  A  NTH  R  0  PT.    189 

auspicious  omen,  that  the  form  in  which  Christianity  has  walked 
forth  most  prominently  in  the  sight  of  nations  in  these  latter 
ages  has  again  been  that  of  love ;  we  will  recognize  her  even 
by  that  railing,  and  know  of  a  certainty  that  she  is  about  her 
natural  and  peculiar  work,  when  she  brings  hope  to  the  prisoner 
and  freedom  to  the  slave. 

We  arrive  now  at  the  second  portion  of  that  twofold  task 
which  Wilberforce  believed  to  be  appointed  him  by  God. 
This  was  the  reformation  of  manners.  The  method  to  be 
adopted  was  that  of  public  exposure  and  philanthropic  appeal. 
The  force  of  Christian  love,  scattered  in  countless  bosoms  in 
the  British  Islands,  was  to  become,  as  it  were,  conscious  of 
itself,  to  gather  together  and  unite :  when  this  was  accom- 
plished, it  was  to  turn  in  concentrated  power  against  evil,  in 
whatever  form  and  place  it  appeared,  either  by  bringing  its  in- 
fluence to  bear  directly  on  the  legislature,  or  by  local  and  per- 
sonal endeavors.  His  efforts  mark  the  commencement  of  the 
second  stage  of  philanthropy ;  the  fire  was  to  spread  wide,  and 
the  attempt  was  to  be  made  to  give  it  form  and  union. 

We  can  here,  again,  while  yielding  perfect  approbation,  be- 
stow but  a  qualified  applause  upon  Wilberforce,  as  the  leader 
and  representative  of  what,  if  you  choose,  you  may  call  Exeter 
Hall  Philanthropy.  The  part  he  played  can  be  easily  compre- 
hended. Wherever  there  germinated  a  scheme  of  benevolence, 
he  cast  on  it  a  glance  of  encouragement ;  whoever  designed, 
by  voluntary  efforts  on  the  part  of  himself  and  his  fellows,  to 
benefit  any  part  of  the  human  race,  looked  toward  Wilber- 
force, nor  looked  in  vain.  But,  afler  all,  he  was  rather  the 
principal  worker  in  philanthropy,  than  its  organizing,  ordering, 
compelling  chief;  for  him  we  still  wait.  To  discern,  by  far- 
reaching  and  unerring  glance,  the  real  force  and  the  real  perils 
of  this  wide-spread  benevolence,  this  many-worded  spirit  of 


190  wilberforce; 

kindness,  that  gatliered  its  assemblies  and  spoke  on  its  plat- 
forms; to  connect  it,  as  a  great  phenomenon,  with  the  grand 
characteristics  of  our  age ;  to  be  a  head  to  its  great  throbbing 
heart,  an  eye  to  its  hundred,  earth-embracing  hands,  was  not 
given  to  Wilberforce.  Philanthropy,  under  him,  was  aptly 
and  expressively  emblemed  by  that  motley  throng  which  Sir 
James  Stephen  so  graphically  depicts  swarming  in  the  cham- 
bers of  his  house ;  a  number  of  living  and  embodied  forces, 
some  of  whim,  some  of  folly,  some  of  mere  maudlin  softness, 
all  inclined  to  do  good,  and  complacently  concluding  that  good 
intentions  would  pass  for  substantial  working  power.  But  we 
by  no  means  allege  that  it  was  a  slight  or  profitless  work  which 
Wilberforce  did.  Unless  you  know  how  to  direct  your  motive 
power,  you  will  do  no  work ;  but  unless  your  have  your  mo- 
tive power,  you  are  in  a  still  more  hopeless  case.  He,  and  the 
right-hearted  men  who  were  around  him,  fanned  into  a  flame 
which  covered  Britain  with  that  spirit  of  active  love  which  the 
holy  Howard  evoked.  To  consider  the  value  of  this  service 
open  to  discussion,  seems  to  deny  every  instinct  man  feels, 
every  rule  by  which  he  acts.  If  a  man  says  that  it  is  not  a 
consoling,  an  auspicious  fact,  that  in  a  million  breasts  there  is 
awakened  the  will,  the  bare  will,  to  work  and  war  for  the  dif- 
fusion of  light  over  our  world,  for  the  social  and  moral  amel- 
ioration of  men,  we  know  not  how  to  answer  him.  If  a  man, 
contemplating  the  great  temptation  which,  by  necessity  of  po- 
sition, assails  Britain  in  these  ages,  the  temptation  to  circum- 
scribe the  blue  vault  by  an  iron  grating,  and  beneath  it,  as  in  a 
temple,  kneel  before  the  shrine  of  Mammon,  finds  no  healing, 
counteracting  influence  in  the  spectacle  of  thousands  of  British 
hands  stretched  out  to  take  Mammon's  gold  and  lay  it  on  a 
higher  altar,  we  can  not  assail,  as  we  can  not  conceive,  his  po- 
sition.    If  any  one  does  not  perceive  that  there  is  an  infinite 


AND    THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    PH  I  L  A  XT  U  R  0  P  Y.         191 

difference,  and  that  a  difference  of  advantage  and  advance  be- 
tween a  nation,  slothful  and  avaricious,  that  will  do  and  give 
nothing  in  the  cause  of  God  and  humanity,  and  a  nation  saying, 
'•  I  2cill  give,  I  will  act,  and  if  I  know  not  how,  I  will  earnestly 
hear,"  wc  can  merely  signify  dumb  astonishment.  Had  phi- 
lanthropy hitherto  done  nothing,  its  presence  in  the  common- 
wealth were  a  blessing  as  of  the  early  rain ;  if  it  has  in  certain 
directions  fallen  into  error,  it  is  both  a  commonplace  and  a 
flital  mistake  to  cast  away  good  with  evil ;  an  error  not  com- 
mitted, save  by  madmen,  in  other  departments,  for  you  do  not 
cast  away  your  sword  for  its  rust,  or  your  scythe  because  it  is 
not  hung  with  perfect  scientific  accuracy.  But  philanthropy, 
Exeter  Hall  Philanthropy,  has  done  much.  We  can  not  con- 
sider as  nothing  the  alleviation  of  the  woes  of  factory  children, 
the  erection  of  ragged  schools,  the  providing  of  shelter  for  the 
houseless,  of  food  for  the  starving ;  we  can  not  consider  it  little 
to  have  sown  the  world  with  Bibles !  Since  the  day  when 
Howard  called  it  forth,  as  a  power  distinctly  to  be  seen  and 
felt  in  human  affairs,  its  progress  has  been  one  before  which 
oppression  has  flillen,  its  step  has  startled  cruelty  and  crime. 
God  has  honored  it  hitherto,  and  he  will  bless  it  still. 

But  however  well  it  may  be  to  express  the  plain  truth,  and 
however  lawful  to  draw  encouragement  therefrom,  it  is  cer- 
tainly of  more  strict  practical  avail  to  clear  the  way  for  future 
work,  than  to  rejoice  over  what  has  been  done.  We  shall  offer 
a  few  leading  suggestions  bearing  on  the  internal  and  operating 
mechanism  of  philanthropy.  We  shall  be  very  brief,  leaving 
readers  to  follow  out  our  ideas  for  themselves. 

First  of  all,  it  must  be  clearly  and  defaiitely  understood 
what  this  wide-spread  benevolence,  in  its  strict  nature,  is ;  we 
mean,  as  an  agent  for  producing  actual  work.  Emotion  of 
every  sort,  all  that  portion,  so  to  speak,  of  the  mind  which 


192  WILBERFORC  E  ; 

generates  action,  is  simply  a  force ;  whether  it  does  good  or 
evil,  depends  entirely  on  how  it  is  directed.  Steam  lies  for 
ages  unknown  as  a  moving  power ;  then  for  ages  it  is  used 
merely  in  mines  and  coal-pits;  at  last  it  unites  all  lands  by  its 
iron  highways,  quickening  the  very  pulse  of  the  world,  and 
making  man  finally  victorious  over  every  element.  The  ten- 
derest  pity,  the  most  ardent  love,  can  never  be  aught  but  a 
steam  power ;  you  must  know  precisely  how  to  use  it,  or  it 
steads  you  not.  Nay,  such  a  thing  is  plainly  possible  as  that 
the  force  should  do  evil  instead  of  good.  In  Hannibal's  army 
at  Zama,  the  elephants  were  turned  back  upon  his  own  troops ; 
it  had  been  better  if  he  had  had  no  elephants. 

This  is  a  principle  which,  when  stated  in  terms,  no  one  will 
deny ;  but  it  is  of  vital  importance,  and  is  very  apt  to  be  prac- 
tically lost  sight  of.  The  excellence  of  a  man's  sentiment  is 
apt  to  cast  a  delusive  brightness  over  his  thought ;  when  we 
listen  to  one  whom  we  know  to  be  a  good  man,  the  fervor  of 
whose  spirit  delights  and  inspires,  we  feel  it  a  thankless  and 
ungrateful  task  to  bring  his  schemes  under  the  dry  light  of 
reason,  and  tell  him  that  they  are  naught.  Yet,  when  we  come 
into  contact  with  fact  and  reality,  emotion  goes  for  nothing ; 
good  intention  is  whiffed  aside  ;  no  music  of  applause,  no  gild- 
ing of  oratory,  will  keep  the  sinking  ship  afloat;  it  settles 
down  like  a  mere  leaky  cask.  Philanthropists  must  learn  to 
look  deeper  than  the  first  aspect  of  a  project,  to  examine  its 
ulterior  bearings,  to  see  how  it  allies  itself  with  social  laws ; 
they  must  accustom  themselves  to  resist  the  soft  charm  of 
plausible  eloquence,  to  examine  the  bare  truth  advocated,  and 
to  discern  and  accept  this  truth  when  recommended  by  no  elo- 
quence, and  scarcely  caught  from  stammering  lips. 

Our  second  suggestion  is  this.  That  philanthropy  should  clear 
its  eyesight  by  an  acquaintance  with  that  science  which  has  for 


AND    THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    PHI  L  A  NT  II  RO  P  Y.        193 

its  object  the  laws  of  our  social  system.  We  care  not  how  you 
name  this  science ;  call  it  sociology,  or  political  economy,  or 
what  you  please ;  we  merely  say,  that  since  all  hunnan  affairs 
are  inextricably  interwoven,  no  man  can  rightfully  hold  himself 
entitled  to  put  his  hand  to  any  part  of  the  social  fabric,  with- 
out knowing  how  his  act  will  affect  other  parts.  There  are 
only  two  possible  hypotheses  on  which  the  science  of  which  we 
speak  could  be  attacked ;  that  there  are  no  laws  in  economic 
and  social  matters,  or  that  they  are  so  profoundly  mysterious, 
that  an  attempt  to  know  them  \s  prima  facie  absurd.  The  first, 
no  one,  we  suppose,  since  the  days  of  Bacon,  would  maintain. 
The  second  might  be  urged  with  some  faint  show  of  reason ; 
but  we  are  convinced  it  is  radically  unsound.  The  freaks  of 
individual  will  are  countless ;  the  soul  of  man  is  certainly  the 
one  thing,  of  all  we  know,  which  comes  nearest  to  giving  us 
the  idea  of  infinitude ;  but  it  is  assuredly  true,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  there  are  certain  great  laws  which  may  be  discerned 
acting  in  man's  life  from  age  to  age,  and  that  their  general  ac- 
tion may  be  traced  and  depended  on.  Political  economy  can 
be  attacked  by  no  arguments  which  do  not  militate  against 
science  in  general ;  and  to  answer  an  argument  leveled  against 
modern  science,  would  certainly  be  giving  a  sufficient  reason 
to  every  reader  to  close  our  book.  We  think  a  little  calm  re- 
flection will  induce  readers  to  agree,  in  what  is  with  us  a  pro- 
found conviction,  that  philanthropy  ought  more  and  more  to 
ally  itself  with  social  science,  and  that  the  happiest  results  may 
be  looked  for  from  the  union. 

Our  last  suggestion  is  perhaps  the  most  important  of  all :  it 
refers  to  the  precise  mode  of  going  to  work ;  to  the  manner  in 
which  agencies  are  to  be  made  effective.  And  if  we  have  hith- 
erto ventured  to  oppose  Mr.  Carlyle,  we  now  turn  round  and 
take  an  arrow  from  his  quiver.     In  every  case  where  work  is 

9 


194  WILBERFORCEJ 

to  be  done,  let  the  whole  power  of  all  engaged  be  broiignt  to 
bear  to  this  end — to  get  men  to  do  it.  The  whole  might  of 
Mr.  Carlyle's  genius  has  been  bent  to  the  proclamation  of  one 
great  truth — the  sumless  worth  of  a  man.  Every  thing  else  is 
dead.  Constitutions  of  absolute  theoretic  perfection,  laws  of 
faultless  equity,  riches  and  armies  beyond  computation,  will 
be  of  themselves  of  no  avail ;  men  may  put  fire  into  these, 
but  these  will  never  fill  the  place  of  men.  And  the  operations 
of  the  Bible  Society  have,  we  believe,  given  the  greatest  con- 
firmation to  Mr.  Carlyle's  words  on  this  point  ever  furnished 
in  the  history  of  the  world,  or  possibly  to  be  furnished.  It 
has  given  us  one  other  proof  that  it  is  by  man  God  will  con- 
vert the  world ;  the  Bible  itself,  when  alone,  has  not  supplied 
the  want.  Here  is  the  difficulty  of  difficulties.  You  can  get 
gold  by  subscription ;  but  a  man  of  real  power,  of  piety,  fac- 
ulty, energy,  can  not  be  subscribed  for.  It  is  by  the  eye 
cleared  and  sharpened  by  long  experience  he  can  be  recognized ; 
it  is  by  the  sagacious,  powerful  man,  that  the  man  of  power  is 
known ;  imbecility,  seated  on  a  mountain  of  gold,  can  do 
nothing  here.  And  yet,  till  you  get  your  men,  nothing  is 
done ;  if  you  give  your  gold  to  bad  or  incompetent  men,  it 
were  better  that  you  flung  it  into  the  Thames.  It  must  be  fixed 
as  an  axiom  in  the  heart  of  every  philanthropist  and  philan- 
thropic society,  that  this  is  the  point  of  absolute  success  or  ab- 
solute failure ;  it  must  be  fairly  comprehended,  that  it  can  not 
be  attained  by  mere  examining  of  reports  or  any  other  me- 
chanical process,  although,  indeed,  each  of  these  may  contribute 
its  aid;  only,  never  for  a  moment  is  it  to  be  forgotten  that  it 
must  be  done.  Perhaps  the  great  secret  of  getting  at  a  prac- 
tical test  and  assurance  in  this  matter,  lies  in  the  discovery  of 
some  readily  applicable  method  of  ascertaining  the  real  effects 
of  a  man's  work  in  the  sphere  to  which  you  appoint  him. 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PHILANTHROPY.    195 

Offices  might  never  be  at  first  given  for  a  permanence ;  by  a 
continual  casting  away  of  the  incompetent,  the  truly  competent 
might  gradually  be  found.  We  suspect  this  were  the  only  in- 
fallible method.  We  are  not  blind  to  its  difficulties,  but  any 
difficulties  must  be  encountered  in  the  only  way  to  life,  and  for 
the  avoidance  of  a  death  the  more  ghastly  for  its  "  affectation 
of  life."  If  all  the  men  employed  by  philanthropy,  in  its  un- 
numbered schemes  of  instruction,  were  godly,  earnest,  and 
able  men,  what  a  power  for  good  were  then  acting  in  our  coun- 
try and  to  the  ends  of  the  earth !  Then  would  Mr.  Carlyle 
have  no  word  of  objection  to  offer ;  nay,  we  believe  he  would 
heartily  applaud,  for  we  know  well  his  nobleness,  and  that 
nothing  would  delight  him  so  much  as  to  be  dazzled  by  a  light 
of  his  own  kindling. 

We  think  these  suggestions  of  capital  importance  to  the 
future  advancement  and  real  success  of  philanthropy.  But 
they  are,  as  we  have  here  given  them,  to  be  looked  upon  in 
the  light  of  finger-posts,  indicating  the  way  toward  compre- 
hensive reform,  rather  than  unfolding  the  methods  of  such. 
Enough  for  us,  if  we  have  thrown  out  a  few  hints  which  may 
be  of  practical  avail  toward  consolidating,  invigorating,  and 
ultimately  extending  its  operations.  If  it  is,  on  the  hypothesis 
that  it  is  attainable,  and  that  work  can  be  done  by  its  agency, 
a  noble  form  of  exertion  which  arises  from  union,  sympathy, 
and  the  power  of  moral  suasion,  let  us  recognize  a  truly  effect- 
ive force  in  philanthropy.  If  pestilent  babblers  will  endeavor 
to  possess  our  platforms,  and  to  substitute  mere  ignorance  and 
sentimentality  for  knowledge  and  true  manly  compassion,  let 
men  of  real  power,  by  the  might  of  those  clear,  strong  words 
which  an  English  audience  really  loves,  strike  them  into  harm- 
less silence  or  benignant  shame.  If  it  is  a  fact,  so  boldly  writ- 
ten on  the  forehead  of  our  age,  that  its  denial  is  an  absurdity, 


196  wilberforce; 

and  so  firmly  impressed  upon  our  modern  forms  of  life,  that 
its  alteration  were  an  attempt  to  hide  the  steam-engine,  to  bury 
the  press,  to  raze  from  the  annals  of  man  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, that  the  voice  of  public  opinion,  whether  right  or  wrong, 
does  now  rule  Great  Britain,  let  no  true,  and  bold,  and  earnest 
man  among  us  disdain  to  speak  into  the  public  ear  by  those 
thousand  channels  which  determine  the  sound  of  that  voice. 
Let  Exeter  Hall  stand ;  shut  no  door  where  men  are  wont  to 
assemble  to  listen  to  men ;  but  let  every  one  who  listens  there 
scrutinize  and  judge  in  the  awe  of  a  fearful  responsibility,  and 
let  every  one  speak  as  before  God.  When  one  surveys  society 
in  our  days,  and  lays  to  heart  how  it  is  guided,  he  does  not  fail 
to  learn,  that  the  task  of  speaking  words  to  a  human  assem- 
blage just  at  present,  is  as  the  task  of  holding  the  lightnings. 

The  conduct  of  the  opposition  to  the  Slave  Trade,  and  the 
perpetual  promotion  and  superintendence  of  philanthropic  op- 
erations, were  those  aspects  of  the  life  of  Wilberforce  which 
first  caught  the  eye,  and  stood  out  most  boldly  to  the  public 
gaze.  Yet,  perhaps,  it  is  by  somewhat  altering  our  point  of 
view  that  we  gain  a  full  and  clear  comprehension  at  once  of 
the  character  in  which  he  really  was  most  serviceable  to  his 
country,  of  the  fountain  whence  each  separate  stream  of  his 
activity  flowed,  and  of  the  highest  lesson  his  walk  conveys. 
Eegard  him  in  his  sole  capacity  as  a  Christian  man ;  look  upon 
him  as  he  moves  in  the  circles  of  parliamentary  ambition,  in 
the  full  influence  of  that  icy  glitter  which  is  the  light  and  the 
warmth  of  those  high  regions.  You  then  see  how  living  Chris- 
tianity, unassisted  by  the  might  of  talent,  can  bear  itself  in  the 
midst  of  political  excitement  and  intrigue ;  you  may  then 
judge  whether  those  ancient  arms,  the  shield  of  faith,  the 
helmet  of  salvation,  and  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  have  lost 
their  heavenly  temper. 


AND   THE   DEVELOPMENT    OF    PHILANTHROPY.         197 

You  find  that,  during  his  whole  life,  these  never  fail  him. 
From  fashion,  audits  loud  pretense  of  joy,  he  turns  aside;  the 
atmosphere  of  fliction  is  too  foul  for  his  purified  organs  ;  hold- 
ing by  the  standard  of  truth  and  godliness  alone,  he  becomes 
himself  a  party.  In  a  region  unseen  by  the  world,  in  the  still- 
ness of  the  closet,  w^herc  only  the  all-seeing  Eye  is  upon  him, 
he  lays  open  the  recesses  of  his  soul,  that  divine  light  may  pen- 
etrate and  pervade  its  every  chamber ;  there,  on  his  knees  be- 
fore God,  he  laments  for  secret  sins,  and  pleads  for  holiness  in 
his  inner  life ;  he  looks  earnestly  and  with  severe  honesty 
within  ;  searching  his  heart  with  the  Word  of  God  as  with  a 
candle,  that  there  may  lurk  in  it  no  thought  or  feeling  to  exalt 
itself  against  the  Most  High.  He  then  goes  into  Parliament 
and  the  world.  By  the  gleam  of  the  gold,  it  is  seen  that  it  has 
been  purified  by  celestial  fire ;  his  light  shines  before  men ; 
they  acknowledge  it  to  be  a  steadfast  flame,  untainted  by  the 
dim  atmosphere  in  which  it  glows,  and  ever  pointed  to  heaven ; 
they  are  compelled  to  glorify  the  God  whom  ho  serves.  He 
embodies  the  simple  might  of  goodness ;  the  serene  majesty 
of  light.  He  shows  what  that  politician  has  won  whose  political 
scheme  is  briefly  this,  that  he  will  follow  the  Lord  fully,  and 
proves  what  a  rectifying,  healing,  irradiating  power  in  human 
affairs  is  the  awakened  and  vivid  consciousness  of  immediate 
relationship  to  the  Creator.  He  touches  every  question  with 
the  Ithuriel  spear  of  Cliristian  truth,  and  the  falsehood  in  it 
starts  forth  as  by  irresistible  compulsion  in  its  own  image. 
And  so,  where  the  subject  suggests  doubt,  where  soft  folds  of 
plausibility  are  drawn  over  moral  delinquency,  or  the  shiflnig 
meteor  of  expediency  offers  itself  for  the  pole-star  of  duty,  men 
turn  to  Wilberforce ;  look  on  this,  they  say,  with  your  eye,  we 
believe  it  has  been  purified  by  a  light  divine. 

To  trace  the  various  phases  in  which  this  distinctive  godliness 


198  WILBERFORCE  ; 

manifested  itself  in  his  parliamentary  career,  and  to  exhibit 
the  various  testimonies  given  to  its  heavenly  virtue  by  the 
men  with  whom  he  worked,  were  to  detail  his  actings  from 
his  twenty-sixth  year.     One  instance  serves  for  a  thousand. 

We  have  all  heard  of  the  impeachment  of  Melville.  Of  his 
perfect  innocence,  or  partial  delinquency,  it  is  not  the  place  to 
speak.  However  it  was,  the  case  was  one  of  profound  interesfc 
in  Parliament,  and  ministers  were  extremely  anxious  to  screen 
him.  Wilberforce  was  doubly  drawn  to  come  to  a  conclusion 
favorable  to  him.  His  heart  was  naturally  of  a  delicately  ten- 
der and  kindly  order,  and  his  old  friend  Pitt  had  set  his  heart 
on  clearing  Melville.  He  examined  the  matter ;  but  could 
not  suppress  the  consciousness  of  grave  doubts.  He  listened 
eagerly  to  the  explanations  offered  by  the  ministers,  when  the 
discussion  came  on  in  Parliament ;  looking  into  them  with 
the  piercing  flash  of  English  shrewdness,  quickened  by  godly 
earnestness,  he  saw,  or  thought  he  saw,  them  burned  up  as  grass 
by  lightning :  he  hesitated  not  a  moment,  but  rose  to  his  feet. 
The  eye  of  Pitt  was  on  him,  with  the  pleading  of  affection,  and 
the  authority  of  possessed  esteem  ;  he  felt  the  fascination  of  its 
gaze.  But  he  faltered  not  :  he  spoke  the  bold,  unmeasured 
words  of  Christian  honor  ;  he  went  against  ministers,  and  con- 
demned Melville.  His  words  fell  on  an  attentive  house ; 
the  number  of  votes  he  influenced  was  named  at  forty  ;  min- 
isters were  defeated.  It  was  felt  that  in  a  question  of  sim- 
ple integrity,  where  casuistry  had  to  be  eluded,  and  plausibility 
swept  aside,  Wilberforce  was  the  last  authority.  In  the  British 
senate  in  the  nineteenth  century,  when  a  point  of  morality  had 
to  be  settled,  it  was  not  to  the  man  of  poor  duelling  "  honor," 
it  was  not  to  the  philosophic  moralist,  it  was  not  to  the  up- 
right merchant,  men  looked  for  a  decision  :  it  was  to  the  Chris- 
tian senator,  whose  code  was  his  Bible,  and  who  walked  in 


AND    THE    DEVE     OPMENT    OF    PHILANTHROPY.         199 

childlike  simplicity,  by  the  old  conversion  light.  Consider  the 
number  of  opinions  represented  in  that  assembly,  and  then  es- 
timate the  weight  and  worth  of  this  testimony. 

Thus  did  Wilberforce,  in  his  station  in  public  affairs,  con- 
spicuously  manifest  to  man  the  fresh  and  prevailing  power  of 
living  Christianity,  and  testify  its  superiority  to  every  other 
light.  The  boolc  which  he  published  was  just  the  same  testi- 
mony expressed  in  words.  To  criticise,  however  briefly,  the 
"  View  of  Practical  Christianity,"  were  now  perfectly  out  of 
date.  It  was  marked  by  no  peculiar  traits  of  genius,  by  no 
originality  of  thought  or  style.  But  it  w^as  clear,  explicit, 
w^arm,  and  animated  ;  over  it  all  breathed  the  fervor  of  love 
and  the  earnestness  of  faith ;  it  was  an  attempt  to  urge  the 
pure  Gospel  on  the  fashionable  and  w^orldly,  and  hold  it,  to  use 
Milton's  superb  language,  in  their  faces  like  a  mirror  of  dia- 
mond, that  it  might  dazzle  and  pierce  their  misty  eyeballs. 
And  mankind  did  consent  to  listen  to  its  pleading ;  it  went 
round  the  world  :  very  few  books  have  been  so  widely  popular. 
It  was  published  in  1797. 

Respecting  the  domestic  life  of  Wilberforce,  we  require  to 
say  very  little.  Biography  treats  of  the  influences  which  mold 
character,  of  the  influences  which  character  exerts ;  if,  in  the 
circle  of  private  life,  there  is  any  important  element  of  influ- 
ence, it  must  be  noted ;  but,  if  biography  were  to  regard  a  man 
not  as  before  the  world  but  as  in  his  flimily,  it  would  at  once 
descend  from  the  office  of  instructress  to  every  noble  faculty, 
and  accept  the  miserable  function  of  pampering  a  small  and 
unmanly  curiosity.  The  domestic  life  of  Wilberforce  was  of 
that  happy  sort  which  defies  long  description.  It  can  be  but 
in  rare  cases  thaft  the  description  of  the  course  of  a  river,  if 
given  mile  by  mile,  is  interesting ;  even  Wordsworth  can  not 
persuade  us  to  trace  with  him,  more  than  once,  the  course  of 


200  WILBERFOBCE  ; 

that  Duddon,  at  whose  every  winding  he  has  erected  a  mile- 
stone in  form  of  a  sonnet.  The  river  rose  among  green  craggy- 
mountains  ;  in  its  joyful  youth,  it  was  the  playmate  of  sun- 
beams, the  dimpling,  wavering,  sparkling  child,  that  dallied 
with  the  zephyrs,  or  leaped  over  the  precipice,  wreathing  its 
snowy  neck  in  rainbows ;  as  if  in  the  strength  of  youth  and 
manhood  it  flowed  long  through  a  bounteous  and  lordly  cham- 
paign, of  cornfield  and  woodland,  resting  calmly  in  the  noon- 
day sun,  listening  to  the  reaper's  song ;  it  widened  into  a 
peaceful  estuary,  its  force  becoming  ever  less,  and  in  a  silent 
balmy  evening,  lost  itself  in  a  placid  ocean.  This  is  all  we 
wish  to  know  about  the  river.  Much  the  same  is  it  in  such  a 
case  as  that  before  us.  Wilberforce's  boyhood,  manhood,  and 
old  age,  are  aptly  figured  by  such  a  sketch  as  this,  and  we  de- 
sire to  know  little  more  about  them. 

At  the  age  of  thirty-eight,  he  married  ;  of  the  particular  cir- 
cumstances and  nature  of  his  affection  we  are  unable  to  speak ; 
but  we  know  that  his  was  a  happy  family,  and  that  a  con- 
geniality in  the  highest  tastes  bound  him  in  sympathizing  af- 
fection to  his  wife.  In  the  arm-chair,  or  at  the  festal  board,  he 
was  seen  to  the  greatest  advantage.  By  reading  what  he  has 
left  us,  we  can  evidently  form  no  idea  of  what  he  was  either 
in  Parliament  or  in  his  home.  He  expressly  tells  us  that  he 
did  not  succeed  with  his  pen  ;  that  the  quickening  excitement 
of  society,  the  genial  impulse  of  speech,  caused  his  ideas  to 
start  forth  in  more  vivid  colors,  in  quicker  aiid  more  natural 
sequence :  and  we  know  that  the  particular  power  of  both  the 
orator  and  the  wit,  partakes  so  much  of  the  nature  of  a  flavor 
of  an  undefined  and  incommunicable  essence,  that  a  fame  in 
that  sort  must  always  depend  well-nigh  entirely  on  testimony. 
A  witticism  without  the  glance  that  lent  it  fire,  is  often  the 
aew-pearl  without  its  gleam,  a  mere  drop  of  water.     But  we 


AND  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PHILANTHROPY.   201 

can  not  doubt  for  a  moment  that  the  social  powers  of  Wilbcr- 
force  were  of  an  extraordinary  order.  The  two  qualities 
whose  combination  gives  probably  the  most  engaging  manner 
possible,  are  tenderness  and  quick  sympathy ;  the  instanta- 
neous apprehension  of  what  is  said,  and  its  reception  into  the 
arms  of  a  tender,  sympathizing  interest.  Wilberforce  had 
both.  His  heart  was  very  tender.  To  go  from  the  country 
to  the  town,  would  affect  him  to  tears.  When  John  Wesley 
stood  up  and  gave  him  his  blessing,  he  wept.  We  have  seen 
how  he  gave  his  testimony  against  Melville :  hear  now  how 
they  afterward  met ;  we  quote  Wilberforce's  own  words : 
"  We  did  not  meet  for  a  long  time,  and  all  his  connections 
most  violently  abused  me.  About  a  year  before  he  died,  we 
met  in  the  stone  passage  which  leads  from  the  Horse  Guards 
to  the  Treasury.  We  came  suddenly  upon  each  other,  just  in 
the  open  air,  where  the  light  struck  upon  our  faces.  We  saw 
one  another,  and  at  first  I  thought  he  was  passing  on,  but  he 
stopped  and  called  out,  'Ah,  Wilberforce,  how  do  you  do  V 
and  gave  me  a  hearty  shake  by  the  hand.  I  would  have  given 
a  thousand  pounds  for  that  shake."  A  generous  and  tender 
nature,  capable  of  rich  enjoyment.  But  he  was  also  of  keen 
apprehension,  and  for  every  thing  in  nature  or  man  he  had  a 
glance  of  sympathy  ;  provided  always  it  lay  in  the  sunlight, 
provided  it  had  no  guilt  or  baseness  in  it.  Can  we  wonder 
that  he  was  engaging  ? 

It  is  easy  to  present  Wilberforce  to  the  eye  of  imagination 
seated  in  his  arm-chair,  the  center  of  a  pleased  and  mirthful 
throng.  Diminutive  in  size,  with  features  spare  and  sharp, 
with  vivid,  sparkling  eye,  he  does  not  rest,  but  has  a  tendency 
to  jerk  and  fidget ;  his  face  is  piquant,  mobile,  varying  in  its 
lights  and  shades,  like  a  lake  in  a  sunny  breezy  April  day. 
An  idea  is  suggested  by  some  one  of  the  company ;  a  slight 
9* 


202  wilberborce; 

twinkle,  an  instantaneous  change  of  light  in  his  eye,  shows 
he  has  caught  it,  and  embraced  it,  and  looked  round  and  round 
it ;  he  tosses  it  about,  as  if  from  hands  full  of  gold-dust,  till  in 
a  few  moments  it  is  wrapped  in  new  light  and  gilding — or  he 
playfully  transfixes  it  on  the  unpoisoned  dart  of  a  light,  genial 
banter,  shrewd  and  arch,  which  finds  a  way  straight  to  the 
heart — or  his  face  grows  solemn,  and  he  utters,  unostentatiously 
but  earnestly,  a  few  devout  words  regarding  it.  Now  his  face 
is  one  free,  indefinite,  joyful  smile — now  he  mimicks  some  par- 
liamentary orator — now  he  is  giving  some  little,  graphic,  faintly 
caustic  sketch  of  character,  with  a  sharp  catching  smile  about 
his  lips — and  now  he  listens  quietly,  a  tear  in  his  eye.  Sir 
James  Stephen,  who  doubtless  was  intimately  acquainted  with 
Wilberforce,  compares  his  vivacity  to  Voltaire's,  and  sets  his 
tenderness  above  that  of  Rousseau ;  Madame  de  Stael  pro- 
nounced him  the  w^ittiest  man  in  England.  But  we  are  con- 
vinced that  the  most  entirely  satisfactory  and  expressive  idea 
of  his  whole  manner  to  be  possibly  reached,  is  to  be  found  in 
these  words  of  Mackintosh,  who  visited  him  when  advanced  in 
life :  "  Do  you  remember  Madame  de  Maintenon's  exclamation, 
'  Oh,  the  misery  of  having  to  amuse  an  old  king,  qui  n^est  pas 
amusahle  r  Now  if  I  were  called  to  describe  Wilberforce  in 
one  word,  I  should  say  he  was  the  most  '  amusable'  man  I  ever 
met  with  in  my  life.  Instead  of  having  to  think  what  subjects 
will  interest  him,  it  is  perfectly  impossible  to  hit  on  one  that 
does  not.  I  never  saw  any  one  who  touched  life  at  so  many 
points ;  and  this  is  the  more  remarkable  in  a  man  who  is  sup- 
posed to  live  absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  a  future  state. 
When  he  was  in  the  House  of  Commons,  he  seemed  to  have 
the  freshest  mind  of  any  man  there.  There  was  all  the  charm 
of  youth  about  him.  And  he  is  quite  as  remarkable  in  this 
bright  evening  of  his  days,  as  when  I  saw  him  in  his  glory 
many  years  ago." 


AND  THE  DEXELOPMENT  OF  PHILANTHROPY.    203 

The  concluding  years  of  his  life  were  calm  and  beautiful. 
He  spent  them  at  liis  country  residence  of  Highwood.  More 
and  more  his  eye  turned  toward  the  home  he  was  now  Hear- 
ing ;  through  his  vivacity,  through  his  still  fresh  activity,  there 
shone  more  and  more  the  softening,  mellowing  light  of  holiness. 
He  loved  to  expatiate  under  the  open  sky,  to  watch  the  dew- 
drops,  to  gaze  long  and  with  unsated  delight  upon  flowers,  the 
rising  gratitude  and  delight  of  his  soul  flowing  forth  in  the 
words  in  which  King  David  voiced  similar  feelings  on  the  bat- 
tlements of  Zion,  three  thousand  years  ago.  "  Surely,"  he 
would  say,  "  flowers  are  the  smiles  of  God's  goodness." 

In  1832,  he  passed  tranquilly  into  his  rest. 

Richly  gifted  by  nature,  Wilberforce  never  repaired  the 
waste  and  dissipation  of  his  fliculties  in  those  years  when  a 
man  ought  to  be  undergoing  a  serious  and  methodic  education. 
The  mighty  intellectual  powers  were  not  his :  the  strength  of 
far-reaching,  penetrating  thought,  the  comprehensive  and 
ordered  memory,  the  imagination  of  inevitable  eye  and  crea- 
tive hand.  Unless  that  perpetual  glow  of  feeling,  that  free  and 
exuberant  fertility  of  wit,  that  natural  power  of  eloquence  and 
acting,  come  within  the  strained  limits  of  a  definition  of  genius, 
he  certainly  had  none.  But  in  the  evening  of  his  days  he 
could  look  over  his  lif^,  and  recall  the  hour  when  he  had  de- 
voted himself  to  the  Saviour,  and  thank  God,  without  hy- 
pocrisy, that  he  had  been  enabled  in  measure  to  perform  his 
vow.  His  life  was  not  ineflective  or  dark;  it  was  spent  in  the 
loblest  manner  in  which  a  man  can  live,  in  adx^ancing  the 
glory  of  earth's  eternal  King,  by  blessing  that  creature  man 
whom  He  has  appointed  its  king  in  time ;  and  over  it  there 
lies  divine  grace,  uniting,  harmonizing,  beautifying  all,  like  the 
bow  of  God's  covenant. 


204  THE   DEVELOPMENT    OF   PHILANTHROPY. 

Ii  treating  our  next  biographic  subject,  we  are  furnished 
with  a  fitting  opportunity  of  noting,  in  certain  important  and 
suggestive  particulars,  the  general  mode  in  which  the  social 
relations  would  shape  themselves  out  in  a  state  of  Christian 
freedom.  Our  glance  here  becomes  wider ;  we  touch  upon  the 
vital  question  of  the  relation  between  man  and  man,  as  free 
and  equal  members  of  one  commonwealth;  and  we  are  thu 
appropriately  introduced  to  our  final  chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

budgett:  the  christian  freeman. 

What  is  that  one  point  in  which  nature  surpasses  all  novelists 
and  depictors  of  character,  and  by  their  relative  approach  to 
which,  all  such  are  to  be  ranked,  from  Shakespeare  downward  1 
It  is  the  union  of  variety  with  consistency.  To  draw  the  man 
of  one  idea  is  easy :  you  have  just  to  represent  him,  in  all  cir- 
cumstances however  distracting,  with  his  thoughts  running  in 
one  channel ;  on  all  occasions  however  irrelevant,  introducing 
his  favorite  topic ;  and,  unseduced  by  any  evils  incurred  or 
benefits  foregone,  spending  health  and  wealth  in  the  indulgence 
of  his  propensity.  Don  Quixote,  Mr.  Shandy,  and  my  be- 
loved Uncle  Toby,  are  models  in  this  sort.  To  draw  the  man 
who  is  a  bundle  of  inconsistencies  is  also  easy  :  to  attain  this, 
you  have  simply  to  pay  no  attention  to  what  your  character, 
as  an  individual,  either  says  or  does,  putting  your  own  opinions, 
on  all  subjects,  into  his  mouth,  making  him  act,  in  all  cases,  just 
as  the  hour  suggests,  and  always  exacting  from  him  the  hero- 
ism to  abandon  his  own  individuality,  to  contradict  himself  in 
opinion  and  action,  in  order  to  advance  your  plot,  or  bring  you 
out  of  a  difficulty.  Now,  nature  never  produces  a  man  whose 
whole  existence  is  simply  and  solely  one  idea,  although  she 
comes  very  near  it ;  for  the  most  part  her  way  is  to  give  men 
a  large  variety  of  qualities,  opmions,  powers :  the  man  of  ab- 
solute inconsistency  she  never  produces  at  all :  her  own  unat- 


206       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

tamable  skill  is  shown  in  the  delicate  graduation  and  adjust- 
ment of  powers  so  that  they  can  live  at  peace  in  one  bosom, 
and  the  man  is  a  single  personal  identity.  As  she  has  struck 
a  beautiful  harmony  in  the  senses,  so  that,  in  their  variety,  they 
result  in  unity,  so  does  she  unite  variety  with  unity  in  the  in- 
dividual character ;  her  men  are  not  single  lines,  nor  does  she 
piece  together  contradictions ;  weakness  and  strength  in  action, 
unless  each  is  fitful,  warmth  and  coldness  of  heart,  clearness 
and  obscurity  of  intellect,  generosity  and  niggardliness  of  dis- 
position, never  co-exist.  We  deem  this  an  important  princi- 
ple both  in  criticism  and  biography.  Macaulay  and  Sir  James 
Stephen  have  noted  nature's  variety,  but  we  do  not  remember 
to  have  seen  the  whole  truth  of  her  variety  in  consistency 
stated.  Shylock,  cited  by  Macaulay,  shows  indeed  many 
passions ;  but  they  are  of  a  household ;  they  have  all  a  hell- 
ish scowl;  hatred,  revenge,  avarice,  fanaticism,  darken  his 
brow  and  eye,  but  they  admit  no  alien  gleam  from  love,  for- 
giveness, or  generosity ;  he  is  just  such  a  character  as  nature 
would  produce,  and  as  he  who  held  the  mirror  up  to  nature 
could  paint.  So  it  is  in  every  other  case  instanced  by  Mr. 
Macaulay,  and  so  it  must  always  be  in  nature.  To  expound 
fully,  and  apply  the  principle,  might  make  a  valuable  chapter 
in  criticism.  But  biography,  and  not  criticism,  is  our  present 
business.  The  dramatist  or  novelist,  and  the  biographer  differ 
in  this ;  the  former  have  for  their  aim  to  attain,  amid  diversity, 
a  natural  harmony ;  the  latter  has  nature's  unity  given,  and 
his  task  is  to  show  how  its  variations  cohere  and  are  consist- 
ent. When,  after  fair  scrutiny,  you  find  a  character,  in  a  novel 
or  drama,  acting  inconsistently,  decide  that  the  author  is  so  far 
incompetent ;  when  you  see  a  man  in  life  acting  in  a  manner 
which  appears  to  you  contradictory,  conclude  you  do  not  un- 
derstand him.     To  our  task. 


budgett:   the   christian   freeman.       207 

About  the  beginning  of  this  century  there  was,  at  the  villngo 
school  of  Kimmersden,  near  Coleford,  in  Somersetshire,  a  boy 
about  ten  years  of  age.  lie  had  been  born  at  Wrington,  an- 
other Somersetshire  village,  in  1794,  of  poor  shop-keeping 
people,  who  seem  to  have  been  hard  put  to  it  to  find  a  liveli- 
hood ;  for  they  went  from  village  to  village,  seeking  a  sure 
though  humble  maintenance,  and  it  was  only  after  many  a  shift 
that  they  opened  a  little  general  shop  in  Coleford.  He  was  in 
some  respects  distinguished  from  his  fellows.  One  day  he 
picked  up  a  horse-shoe,  went  with  it  three  miles,  and  got  a 
penny  for  it.  He  managed  to  lay  together  one  or  two  other 
pennies,  and  commenced  trading  among  his  school-fellows. 
Lozenges,  marbles,  and  so  forth,  were  his  wares.  He  sold  to 
advantage,  and  his  capital  increased.  By  calculation  on  the 
prices  charged  in  the  shops,  by  buying  in  large  and  selling  in 
small  quantities,  by  never  losing  an  opportunity  or  wasting  a 
penny,  by  watching  for  bargains  and  stiffly  insisting  on  adher- 
ence to  their  terms,  he  laid  shilling  to  shilling,  and  pound  to 
pound,  until,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  he  was  master  of  thirty 
pounds  sterling.  The  spectacle  can  not  be  called  pleasing.  A 
boy,  whose  feelings  should  have  shared  in  the  exuberance  and 
free  generosity  of  youth,  converted  into  a  premature  skinflint 
and  save-all ;  the  frosty  prudence  of  life's  autumn  crisping  and 
killing  the  young  leaflets  and  budding  blossoms  of  life's  spring ; 
a  rivulet  in  the  mountains  already  banked  and  set  to  turn  a 
mill ; — surely  the  less  we  hear  of  such  a  boy  the  better — was 
he  born  with  a  multiplication  table  in  his  mouth  1  This  boy's 
name  was  Samuel  Budgett. 

A  touch  of  romance  is  a  salutary  ingredient  in  character,  in 
boyhood  and  youth  it  is  particularly  charming ;  but  there  is  a 
possibility  it  may  go  too  far,  and  a  sentimental,  tearful  child, 
who  is  always  giving  some  manifestation  of  the  finer  feelings 


208       budgett:   ihe   christian   freeman. 

of  the  heart,  borders  on  the  intolerable.  There  was  at  this 
same  Kimmersden  school  (even  in  village  schools  variety  of 
character  will  come  out)  a  boy  who  seemed  to  be  somewhat 
of  this  sort.  When  a  little  money  came  into  his  possession, 
he  bought  Wesley's  Hymns,  and  of  a  summer  evening  you 
might  have  seen  him  walking  in  the  fields,  reciting  his  favorite 
pieces  with  intense  enjoyment.  His  mother  was  once  danger- 
ously ill,  and  his  flither  sent  him  on  horseback,  in  the  night,  for 
medical  assistance ;  as  he  rode  back,  in  the  breaking  morning, 
he  heard  a  bird  sing  in  the  park  by  the  wayside ;  he  listened  in 
strange  delight,  and  seemed  to  receive  some  tidings  from  the 
carol.  On  reaching  home,  he  went  to  his  sister,  and  gravely 
informed  her  that  he  knew  their  mother  would  recover,  that 
God  had  answered  his  prayers  on  her  account,  and  that  this 
had  become  known  to  him  as  he  heard  a  little  bird  sing  in 
Mells  Park  that  morning.  Not  one  boy  in  a  thousand — ^we 
speak  with  deliberation — would  have  marked  that  bird's  song. 
On  another  day,  you  might  have  observed  him  coming  along  a 
lane  on  horseback ;  as  you  looked,  you  saw  that  he  was  not 
thinking  of  his  horse  or  his  way ;  his  eyes  had  an  abstracted 
look,  though  animated  and  filled  with  tears ;  the  bridle  had 
fallen  from  his  hand,  and  his  horse  was  quietly  eating  grass. 
He  was  at  the  moment  in  reverie ;  he  was  dreaming  himself  a 
missionary  in  far  lands;  and  the  tears  streamed  down  his 
cheeks  as  he  knelt  among  tropical  bushes,  under  a  southern 
sun,  to  implore  blessing  on  the  household  he  had  left  at  home. 
Such  was  the  sentimental  scholar  of  Kimmersden.  And  what 
was  his  name  !     Samuel  Budgett ! 

Nature  had  framed  no  contradiction.  The  boy's  heart  was 
tenderly  affectionate,  his  nature  keenly  sensitive,  his  sympa- 
thies rich,  kindly,  poetic  :  but  his  young  eyes  had  seen  nothing 
but  struggling  and  penury  in  his  father's  house  ;  he  had  learned. 


budgett:   the    christian   freeman.       209 

by  natural  shrewdness  and  happy  occasion,  the  lesson  of  thrift : 
he  had  a  brain  as  clear  and  inventive  as  his  heart  was  warm  ; 
by  accident  or  otherwise,  the  pleasurable  exercise  of  his  facul- 
ties in  that  juvenile  trading  commenced,  and  with  the  relish  of 
a  born  merchant  he  followed  out  the  game.  The  money  itself 
was  little  more  to  him  than  the  men  are  to  a  born  chess-player  ; 
its  accumulation  merely  testified  that  all  worked  well.  The 
coalescence  and  relative  position  of  the  two  sets  of  qualities 
were  sometimes  finely  shown  ;  he  wasted  no  money,  yet  he 
lost  no  time  in  buying  Wesley's  Hymns  ;  he  amassed  thirty 
pounds  in  a  few  years  of  boyish  trading,  but  when  the  sum 
was  complete  he  gave  it  all  to  his  parents. 

Having  come  finally  to  the  decision  to  be  a  merchant,  and 
adopting  it  as  his  ambition  to  raise  his  family  to  tolerably 
affluent  circumstances,  he  was  apprenticed  at  the  age  of  fifteen 
to  an  elder  brother,  by  a  former  marriage,  who  had  a  shop  in 
Kingswood,  a  village  four  miles  from  Bristol.  His  education, 
now  formally  completed,  had,  in  all  relating  to  books,  been 
meager  enough.  He  had  learned  to  read,  write,  and  to  some 
extent  count ;  no  more.  In  other  respects,  it  had  been  more 
thorough.  He  had  already,  in  his  boyish  mercantile  operations, 
served  an  apprenticeship  to  clearness  of  head,  promptitude  and 
firmness  in  action  ;  his  father's  house  had  been  a  school  of  rare 
excellence  ;  so  rare,  that,  on  the  whole,  flinging  in  Pocklington 
Academy,  and  St.  John's  College  Oxford,  and  the  Gallery  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  into  the  opposite  scale,  we  do  not 
hesitate  a  moment  in  pronouncing  his  education  superior  to 
that  of  Wilberforce.  In  that  house  he  saw  honesty,  industry, 
determination,  and  godliness ;  he  saw  how  severe  the  struggle 
for  existence  really  is  ;  he  saw  how  fiiculties  must  be  worked 
in  order  to  their  eflfective  exercise.  Of  special  importance  was 
that  po'tion  of  his  education  which  consisted  in  the  influence  of 


210       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

his  mother's  godliness.  He  was  still  a  cliild  of  nine,  when  he 
happened  one  day  to  saunter  past  her  room;  the  door  was 
shut,  and  he  heard  her  voice.  She  was  engaged  in  prayer,  and 
the  subject  of  her  petitions  was  her  family.  He  heard  his  own 
name.  His  heart  was  at  once  touched,  and  from  that  moment 
it  turned  toward  heaven.  We  deem  it  a  very  beautiful 
family  incident.  The  heart  of  that  mother  was  probably  heavy 
at  the  moment,  her  eyes  perhaps  filled  with  tears ;  yet  God 
heard  her,  and  on  herself  was  bestowed  the  angelic  office  of 
answering  her  own  prayer.  Samuel  Budgett  went  to  appren- 
ticeship from  his  father's  house,  a  steady,  kindly,  radically  able, 
and  religious  youth. 

His  apprenticeship  was  not  such  as  to  permit  his  habits  of 
perseverant  industry  to  be  broken  or  to  relax.  He  was  at  the 
counter  by  six  in  the  morning,  "  and  nine,  ten,  or  eleven  at 
night,"  were  the  ordinary  hours  of  closing.  The  toil  he  under- 
went was  such,  that  he  used  to  speak  of  it  till  the  close  of  his 
life.  He  was  of  small  strength,  and  little  for  his  years  ;  the 
exertion  of  the  grocer's  business  was  doubtless  too  much  for 
him.  He  soon  became  a  favorite  with  customers,  his  manner 
was  so  unaffectedly  kind,  his  attention  so  close  and  uniform. 
It  is  interesting  also  to  observe  the  keen  thirst  for  knowledge 
which  he  displayed  during  those  years.  If  he  heard  a  sermon, 
he  treasured  it  up  like  a  string  of  pearls,  and  adjourned  at  its 
close  to  some  sequestered  place,  to  con  it  over,  and  lay  it  up 
in  his  inmost  heart.  What  books  came  in  his  way  he  eagerly 
devoured  ;  for  poetry  he  showed  a  keen  relish,  and  committed 
large  portions  to  memory.  He  exclaims,  almost  in  anguish, 
"  O  wisdom  !  O  knowledge  ! — the  very  expressions  convey 
ideas  so  delightful  to  the  mind,  that  I  am  ready  to  leap  out  and 
fly  ;  for  why  should  my  ideas  always  be  confined  within  the 
narrow  compass  of  our  shop   walls  ?"     A  shop-boy  with  so 


budqett:   the   christian   freeman.       211 

genuine  and  fixed  an  aspiration  after  knowledge  will  scarce  fail 
to  find  education.  The  power  to  act  nobly  and  eflfectively  may 
exist  with  little  book-knowledge  :  to  know  living  men,  to  have 
sat  long  under  the  stern  but  thorough  teaching  of  experience, 
to  have  a  sympathy  open  to  the  unnumbered  influences  of  ex- 
haustless  and  ever-healthful  nature,  may  set  a  man  above  those 
who  have  studied  all  things  at  second-hand,  as  seen  through 
other  eyes,  and  represented  by  feeble  human  speech.  Budgett 
had  the  faculty  to  work  well;  he  was  acquiring  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  men  and  a  power  to  measure  them  at  a  glance ; 
he  loved  the  open  fields  and  sky,  the  summer  woods  and  the 
river  bank,  and  every  smile  and  frown  of  the  ever-changing 
but  ever-expressive  face  of  what  the  ancients  well  called  our 
Mother  Earth.  About  the  time  when  his  apprenticeship 
closed,  in  August,  1816,  we  find  him  writing  thus  to  a  friend  : — 
"  As  it  respects  my  coming  to  Frome,  I  thank  you  for  your 
kind  invitation.  I  have  intended  going ;  but  I  assure  you, 
when  it  comes  to  the  point,  I  have  no  inclination  to  go  any 
where ;  for,  if  I  can  not  find  happiness  at  home,  it  is  in  vain  to 
seek  it  any  where  else.  I  think  if  I  were  to  come  with  the 
determination  to  enjoy  the  company  of  my  friends,  by  going 
to  any  places  of  recreation  or  amusement,  though  I  am  very 
fond  of  such  kind  of  engagements,  particularly  where  religion 
and  real  happiness  is  the  subject  of  conversation,  yet  it  may 
tend  rather  to  divert  my  mind  from  God  as  the  source  of  my 
happiness,  than  unite  it  to  him.  But  for  one  thing  I  have 
long  felt  an  earnest  though  secret  desire  ;  which  is,  to  spend  a 
little  time  with  you  and  Mr.  T — —  alone,  where  no  object 
but  God  could  attract  our  attention ;  that  we  may,  by  devout 
conversation,  by  humble,  fervent,  faithful  prayer,  get  our  souls 
united  to  each  other,  and  to  God  our  living  Head,  by  the 
strongest  ties  of  love  and  affection."  The  young  man  who  writes 


212       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

thus  from  behind  a  grocer's  counter,  has  pretty  well  supplied 
the  defects  of  his  education  ;  in  important  respects  he  is  edu- 
cated. The  idea  of  the  last  sentence  is  that  of  the  noblest  pos- 
sible friendship ;  we  can  look  for  no  fairer  spectacle  than  that 
of  those  three  friends  kneeling  before  God,  that  the  celestial 
bond  of  a  common  love  for  Him  may  knit  their  hearts.  And 
it  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  the  style  of  our  extract  is  unques- 
tionably good ;  clear,  nervous,  direct,  and  free  from  any  trace 
of  juvenile  bravura. 

The  reader  will  begin  to  see  that  our  opinion  of  Samuel  Bud- 
gett  is  somewhat  high.  It  is  so.  We  consider  him  far  the 
ablest  man  of  whom  we  have  yet  treated  ;  a  character  of  uncom- 
mon breadth  and  completeness  ;  an  embodiment  of  English 
sagacity,  intelligence,  energy,  and  piety,  as  healthful  and  re- 
spectable as  any  time  could  show  ;  and  conveying,  in  his  life- 
sermon,  many  and  most  important  lessons,  as  the  Christian 
merchant  and  freeman  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

After  serving  for  three  years  with  a  salary,  on  the  expiration 
of  his  seven  years'  apprenticeship,  Samuel  was  taken  into  part- 
nership by  his  brother. 

He  feels  now  that  he  has  got  a  firm  footing,  that  a  spot  had 
been  found  in  the  world  on  which  he  may  live  and  work.  He 
prepares  himself  for  the  future  accordingly.  A  pleasant  little 
background  of  romance  suddenly  beams  out  upon  us.  We 
find  that  long  ago — "  very  early" — ^he  had  fallen  in  love  with  a 
certain  Miss  Smith,  of  Midsomer  Norton.  His  little  touch  of 
originality  had  been  manifested  here  too ;  he  ventured  to  ad- 
mit hope  into  his  heart  to  this  serious  extent ;  he  had  dared  to 
permit  imagination  to  paint,  in  clear  hues  and  with  a  flush  of 
sunlight  over  its  front,  a  snug  pretty  little  cottage  on  his  hori- 
zon, with  one  waiting  at  its  threshold  who  to  him  seemed 
heavenly  fair  ;  and  so,  during  all  his  toil  in  that  dismal  prosaic 


budgett:  the   christian   freeman.       213 

shop  from  morning  to  night,  he  could  see  in  the  distance  that 
angelic  figure  smiling  him  on.  We  rejoice  that  we  did  not  ex- 
press any  emotion  of  pity  for  him  hi  his  affliction ;  he  certainly 
deserved  none.  He  had  now  reached  that  little  cottage ;  from 
the  faint  though  beautifully-tinted  work  of  a  dream,  it  had 
changed  into  solid  brick,  a  decided  improvement ;  he  married 
Miss  Smith,  and  turned  to  face  life  with  the  heart  of  a  man. 
He  was  now  twenty-five  years  of  age. 

Let  us,  for  a  moment,  contemplate  the  sphere  in  which  Sam- 
uel Budgett  commences  work  for  himself;  what  are  his  pros- 
pects, and  what  his  difficulties.  His  sphere  is  not  imposing ; 
it  is  a  retail  shop  in  the  grocery  business,  in  the  village  of 
Kingswood,  four  miles  from  Bristol.  In  the  neighboring  vil- 
lages, and  in  Bristol,  are  multitudes  of  shops  in  all  respects 
similar;  his  brother  is  a  respectable,  industrious,  plodding 
man,  who  has  prospered  hitherto  according  to  his  ambition, 
and  dreams  not  of  any  change.  Around  all  these  shops,  and 
around  this  little  shop  of  Kingswood,  lies  the  world;  each 
shop  represents  a  man  or  men,  combating  on  this  arena  for 
sustenance  and  success.  There  seems  but  little  room  for  ad- 
vancement, little  scope  for  talent ;  one  can  but  buy  and  sell 
like  one's  neighbors,  and  live  as  heretofore ;  at  all  events,  the 
field  is  open  and  level  to  all.  Mercantile  wealth  and  honor 
are,  indeed,  the  possible  prizes ;  but  that  a  village  shop  should 
ever  come  into  competition  with  any  really  great  establishment, 
with  those  of  Bristol,  for  instance,  appears  never  to  have  oc- 
curred to  any  one.  The  little  shop  of  Kingswood  receives 
into  its  working  power  Samuel  Budgett ;  his  prospects  are  such 
as  one  may  have  in  a  village  grocery ;  his  opponents  are  just 
all  the  grocers,  wholesale  and  retail,  who  carry  on  business  in 
these  parts,  and  whom,  if  he  is  to  advance,  he  must,  however 
it  may  pain  his  feelings,  compel  to  make  way. 


214  BUDGETT.     THE     CHRISTIAN     FREEMAN. 

The  new  partner  is  found  to  have  ways  of  his  own,  which, 
in  this  establishment,  must  be  regarded  as  new-fengled  or  even 
officious.  His  brother  casts  a  glance  of  indifference,  or  even 
dislike,  upon  his  proposals  and  proceedings ;  only  after  a  time, 
and  as  the  commanding  talent  of  Samuel  becomes  more  plain, 
does  he  fairly  throw  the  reins  into  his  brother's  hands.  The 
latter  acts  in  the  way  natural  to  him.  It  may  be  briefly  char- 
acterized thus :  he  does,  with  perfect  accuracy  and  thorough- 
ness, what  lies  to  hand,  what  is  ordinary  and  established  in  the 
routine  of  business,  and  he  has  always,  besides,  a  sure  and 
piercing  glance  ahead  and  around.  Now,  we  think  this  is  the 
precise  point  of  difference  between  the  accurate,  methodic  man, 
who  will  conserve  all,  but  make  no  advancement,  and  the  man 
who  will  step  onward  ;  both  are  thorough  workers,  but  the  one 
has  no  originality,  no  instinct  of  improvement,  no  healthful, 
intelligent  audacity,  while  the  other  has.  The  blundering  man, 
again,  the  man  whose  boldness  and  originality  are  not  so  fitly 
those  of  manhood  as  of  youth,  looks  only,  or  principally,  for- 
ward ;  he  devotes  not  sufficient  time  and  energy  to  the  ground 
already  won,  he  will  set  off  in  foolish  pursuit  while  a  body  of 
the  enemy  is  yet  unbroken  on  the  field.  The  man  who  will 
make  real  progress  never  neglects  the  business  of  the  moment, 
but  he  looks  forward  too  ;  he  ventures,  on  the  right  occasion, 
in  the  strength  and  self-reliance  of  talent,  to  break  through  old 
sanctioned  rules  and  shape  new  ones  for  himself.  The  truly 
and  healthfully  original  man  is  not  he  who  recklessly  gambles, 
appealing  from  custom  to  chance,  but  he  who,  with  a  light  of 
nis  own,  holding  as  little  of  chance  as  the  prudence  of  the  veri- 
est plodder,  appeals  from  custom  to  vision.  Such  a  light  had 
Samuel  Budgett ;  in  this  sense,  and  to  this  extent,  he  was  an 
original  man. 

Now,  it  is  not  easy  to  exhibit  \his  originality  of  Budgett's 


budgett:   the    christian   freeman.       215 

in  action.  When  once  a  thing  is  done,  as  Columbus  and  that 
wonderful  Chinese  genius  who  discovered  that  pigs  could  be 
roasted  without  burning  houses  knew,  its  performance,  nay  its 
invention,  seem  the  simplest  things  in  the  world.  If  we  trace 
Budgett's  career,  step  by  step,  we  find  nothing  in  the  course  of 
his  ascent  to  wealth  and  influence  which  it  does  not  seem  cer- 
tain that  we  should  have  done,  had  we  been  in  the  circum- 
stances. Yet  it  is  almost  certain  we  should  have  done  other- 
wise ;  and  we  have  this  simple  way  of  satisfying  ourselves  as 
to  the  probability  that  we  should — viz.,  by  inquiring  whether, 
mutatis  mutandis^  we  are  advancing  in  our  own  sphere.  In 
every  walk  of  life  there  are  certain  minutiae  which  are  visible 
only  to  the  man  of  insight,  and  to  be  seized  only  by  the  man 
of  tact,  but  which  are  yet  the  tender,  scarce  perceptible  fila- 
ments leading  to  fortune's  mines.  If  you  know  not  how  to  see 
and  seize  these  in  your  own  department,  depend  upon  it,  gentle 
reader,  had  you  been  put  down,  instead  of  Samuel  Budgett,  in 
this  shop  at  Kingswood,  you  had  sold  groceries  over  the  coun- 
ter all  the  days  of  your  life. 

Mr.  Arthur  sketches,  with  much  animation  and  graphic 
power,  the  progress  of  Budgett,  as  he  pushed  on,  step  by  step, 
and  won  position  after  position ;  but  we  are  unable  to  follow 
him.  The  reader  must  picture  to  himself  a  man  of  untiring 
activity  who  is  yet  never  flurried,  of  keen  and  constant  sagacity, 
of  tact  in  dealing  with  men,  of  real  and  abounding  affection  to 
his  fellows,  so  that  the  interest  he  manifests  in  their  affairs  has 
in  it  no  element  of  deceit  or  affectation.  He  must  mark  him 
ever  in  the  van  of  circumstance,  discerning  opportunity  from 
afar,  and  seizing  it  with  eagle  swoop.  He  must  see  him  grad- 
ually diffusing  a  spirit  akin  to  his  own  on  all  who  come  within 
the  sphere  of  his  influence ;  incapacity,  Indolence,  and  dishon- 
esty, shrinking  from  his  look.     He  must  note  specially  the 


216       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

skill  with  which  he  combines  conservation  with  advance.  The 
customer  who  is  secured  is  always  first  to  be  attended  to ;  all 
thought  of  extending  the  trade  is  to  be  postponed  to  his  con- 
venience ;  the  shops  which  deal  with  Budgett  are  seen  to  be 
the  most  prosperous,  and  no  customer  is  ever  lost.  To  look  at 
the  perfect  internal  working  of  the  business,  one  fails  to  find 
any  suggestion  of  progress ;  to  mark  how  it  is  expanding,  one 
is  apt  to  think  extension  the  one  endeavor.  Budgett  has  al- 
ways his  foot  on  the  firm  ground,  but  the  light  in  his  eye  comes 
fi^om  yon  bright  gleam  still  in  the  distance. 

One  example  of  his  mode  of  working  is  as  good  as  a  thou- 
sand, and  only  one  can  we  find  space  to  give. 

The  business  has  now  branched  out  in  all  directions.  There 
are  "  several  establishments"  in  Bristol ;  the  retail  shop  is  the 
center  of  great  warehouses  and  counting-houses  ;  at  Kingswood 
there  are  kept  forty-seven  draught  horses.  One  night  the  citi- 
zens of  Bristol  are  startled  by  the  reddening  of  the  whole  hori- 
zon in  the  direction  of  Kingswood  Hill ;  the  warehouses  of  the 
Messrs.  Budgett  are  in  flames.  The  men  of  Bristol  stand 
gazing  as  the  huge  blaze  illumines  the  sky ;  from  all  neighbor- 
ing quarters  there  is  a  flocking  of  spectators,  and  racing  of  en- 
gines. Efforts  are  vain ;  the  horses,  indeed  the  stables,  and 
the  books,  are  preserved ;  but  warehouses,  counting  houses, 
and  the  retail  shop,  are  burned  to  the  ground.  Samuel  Bud- 
gett has  not,  of  course,  forgotten  to  insure,  yet  the  pecuniary 
loss  is  above  three  thousand  pounds.  Here  surely  is  enough 
to  confuse  one  ;  without  warning,  and  in  a  night,  the  fury  of 
fire  consumes  your  accumulated  substance,  and  puts  its  volcanic 
interruption  on  your  arrangements  ;  your  workmen  are  flung 
out  of  their  posts,  your  methods  of  work  are  broken  up,  your 
whole  business-machine  is  torn  limb  from  limb,  and  lies  scat- 
tered in  fragments.     Now  is  the  hour  to  prove  whether  you 


budgett:   the   christian    freeman.       217 

are  a  man  of  self-command  and  originality ;  whether  your 
mind  is  of  that  iron  order  which  the  sound  of  battle  only 
clears  and  animates ;  whether,  when  custom,  on  which,  as  on 
a  quiet  horse,  you  have  hitherto  ridden  composedly  along,  sud- 
denly pitches  you  from  his  neck  and  leaves  you  sprawling,  you 
have  courage  and  power  to  rise  to  your  feet,  and  lay  your 
hand  on  a  new  steed,  and  vault  on  his  back,  and  break  him  in 
for  yourself.  Budgett  sees  into  the  whole  matter,  and  com- 
prehends how  it  is  to  be  managed,  precisely  as  if  he  had  done 
nothing,  his  life  long,  but  set  things  in  train  after  sudden  fires. 

The  next  morning,  every  customer  expecting  goods  on  that 
day  from  the  Budgetts  receives  a  circular.  It  states  briefly 
that  there  has  been  a  fire  on  the  premises,  and  that  one  day  is 
necessary  to  repair  the  consequent  disarrangement.  Just  one 
day ;  in  such  length  of  time,  Samuel  calculates,  the  wrath  of  the 
fire  will  have  been  baulked.  And  one  day  is  sufficient.  He  goes 
swiftly,  but  with  no  hurry,  into  Bristol,  hires  a  new  house,  sets 
all  hands  to  work,  and  the  next  day  sees  all  customers  served. 
Bristol  henceforward  becomes  head-quarters,  and  Samuel  Bud- 
gett, who  is  now  the  sole  head  of  the  business,  more  powerful 
than  ever. 

This  is  the  true  English  working  talent;  the  same  quiet, 
speedy  energy  you  see  in  Churchill,  in  Monk,  and,  in  grander 
combination,  in  Cromwell ;  in  whatever  form  it  is  embodied, 
there  is  no  standing  it ;  men,  nations,  nature  itself,  give  way 
before  it.  We  think  we  may  now  allege  that  Budgett  was  a 
man  of  strong  and  ready  energy,  of  calm,  indomitable  spirit, 
and  of  extraordinary  resource ;  but  this  will  become  still  more 
evident  when  we  contemplate,  at  one  deliberate  glance,  his  final 
attainment. 

It  was  but  an  unpromising  sphere  in  which  we  saw  him  finally 
set  to  work ;  a  village  shop,  with  a  line  of  ionkeys  at  its  door. 

10 


218       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

There  he  took  his  post  to  measure  himself  with  his  opponents, 
to  bring  his  force  into  the  general  system  of  social  dynamics. 
Years  have  gone  by,  and  the  never-fliiling  might  of  intellectual 
power  has  vindicated  itself.  The  force  of  Budgett's  mind  has 
afTected  the  whole  region.  His  warehouses  tower  proudly, 
like  those  of  merchant  princes ;  over  all  the  south-western 
counties  of  England  his  connection  extends ;  over  the  sea, 
rom  distant  lands,  come  vessels  with  cargoes  for  him.  It  is 
probable  that  a  greater  effect  was  not  possible  in  his  depart- 
ment. He  was  not  in  the  arena  of  the  Rothschilds  and  Bar- 
ings, and  we  can  not  say  how  he  would  have  prospered  if 
matched  against  the  great  rulers  of  the  Stock  Exchange.  But 
in  the  field  where  he  did  contend,  he  distanced  all  competition ; 
without  capital,  without  prestige,  in  a  village  in  the  vicinity 
of  a  large  town,  he  built  up  a  business  which  cast  every  rival 
into  the  shade.  And  those  warehouses  have  been  built,  this 
magnificent  business  has  been  established,  with  no  fortuitous 
aid  from  happy  conjunctures  of  circumstance,  or  timeous  open- 
ings of  the  field  ;  it  has  been  by  seeing  the  hitherto  invisible, 
by  descrying  every  trace  of  occasion,  by  the  constant,  imper- 
ceptible application  of  a  clear  and  tireless  intellect,  that  his 
triumphs  have  been  won.  And  now  he  is  a  man  of  wealth  and 
importance  ;  he  has  satisfied  his  youthful  ambition.  The  day- 
was  when  he  sold  cheese  by  the  pound  across  the  counter ;  he 
now  receives  goods  "  by  the  cargo,"  and  sells  them  "  by  the 
ton ;"  the  day  was  when  it  was  a  serious  question  whether 
goods  might  be  conveyed  to  Doynton  and  Pucklechurch,  a 
momentous  and  amazing  undertaking  to  journey  once  a  month 
to  Erome ;  he  has  now  a  regular  staff  of  efficient  travelers, 
spreading  the  connection  north,  south,  east,  into  the  very  heart 
of  England.  "  I  remember,"  said  an  old  man,  who  felt  like 
Caleb  Balderstone  on  the  subject — "  I  remember  when  there 


budgett:   tue   christian    freeman.       219 

were  five  men  and  three  horses,  and  I  have  lived  to  see  three 
hundred  men  and  one  hundred  horses." 

We  think  it  here  in  place,  although  what  we  have  to  say 
must  be  considered  with  the  commentary  of  all  we  have  yet  to 
relate  of  Budgett,  to  look  calmly  in  the  face  certain  objections 
which  have  been  urged  against  him  on  the  score  of  sharp  trad- 
ing. He  rose,  it  has  been  wliispered,  by  elbowing  aside  his 
fellows,  by  grasping,  with  unbecoming  haste  and  eagerness, 
what,  in  natural  order,  would  have  fallen  to  other  men  ;  if  just, 
he  was  not  generous ;  he  gave  no  indulgence,  and  made  no 
allowance ;  he  pressed  every  advantage,  and  used  every  op- 
portunity ;  he  seemed  always  at  a  running  pace,  while  sober 
men  walked.  We  deem  it  the  one  really  important  defect  in 
Mr.  Arthur's  spirited  and  valuable  work  on  Budgett,  that  he 
takes  the  commonplace,  and,  as  we  think,  erroneous  view  of 
his  character  here.  As  his  testimony  may  be  considered  some- 
what partial  to  Budgett,  and  as  it  is  well  to  have  an  error 
which  you  wish  to  combat  stated  in  its  most  plausible  form,  we 
quote  a  paragraph  from  his  pages.  He  has  just  intimated 
that  the  subject  of  his  narrative  was  "  quick  to  descry  an  ad- 
vantage, and  resolute  to  press  it ;"  he  proceeds  thus  : — "  This 

.  .  .  formed  the  chief  deduction  from  the  benevolence 
of  his  character.  In  business  he  was  keen — deliberately,  con- 
sistently, methodically  keen.  He  would  buy  as  scarcely  any 
other  man  could  buy ;  he  would  sell  as  scarcely  any  other  man 
could  sell.  He  was  an  athlete  on  the  arena  of  trade,  and  re- 
joiced to  bear  off  the  prize.  He  was  a  soldier  on  the  battle- 
field of  bargains,  and  conquered  he  would  not  be.  His  power 
over  the  minds  of  others  was  immense,  his  insight  into  their 
character  piercing,  his  address  in  managing  his  own  case  mas- 
terly, and,  above  all,  his  purpose  so  inflexible,  that  no  regard 
to  delicacy  or  to  appearances  would  for  a  moment  beguile  him 


220       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

from  his  object.  He  "VYOiild  accomplish  a  first-rate  transaction 
be  the  difficulty  what  it  might.  That  secured,  his  word  was 
as  gold,  and  generosity  was  welcome  to  make  any  demands  on 
his  gains.  But  in  the  act  of  dealing,  he  would  be  the  aptest 
tradesman  in  the  trade.  To  those  who  only  met  him  in  the 
market,  this  feature  of  his  character  gave  an  unfavorable  im- 
pression. They  frequently  felt  themselves  pressed  and  con- 
quered, and  naturally  felt  sore.  To  those  who  knew  all  the 
excellence  and  liberality  which  lay  beneath  his  hard  mercan- 
tile exterior,  it  appeared  the  peculiarity  and  the  defect  of  an 
uncommonly  worthy  man — yet  still  a  defect  and  a  peculiarity." 
If  Mr.  Arthur  is  wrong  here,  it  is  an  important  error. 
Whatever  you  may  consider,  in  forming  your  judgment  of  a 
merchant,  his  manner  of  carrying  on  business  is  the  first  and 
the  essential  element  in  your  estimate.  If  a  man  is  found 
wanting  here,  all  you  can  say  of  his  other  good  qualities  be- 
comes mere  extenuation.  If  there  was  any  thing  in  Budgett's 
mercantile  dealing  to  be  defined  "  a  deduction  from  his  benevo- 
lence," it  will  go  hard  to  prove  him  really  benevolent  at  all. 
His  radical  character  is  that  of  English  merchant ;  this,  so  to 
speak,  is  the  backbone  of  the  whole  existence  of  Budgett ;  if 
you  detect  a  twist  here,  or  if  the  spinal  marrow  is  diseased, 
you  will  hardly  prove  your  man  handsome  or  sound.  Every 
mouth  must  be  stopped  that  breathes  the  slightest  insinuation 
here  ;  from  his  mercantile  honor  every  imputation  must  be 
brushed  aside ;  and,  by  mercantile  honor,  w^e  mean  all  that 
thorough  gentlemen  can  rightfully  and  honorably  expect  from 
each  other  when  engaged  in  trade.  For  our  own  part,  we 
think  that  Budgett's  native  and  powerful  talent  is  attested  in 
perfect  accordance  with  the  requirements  we  have  just  stated  ; 
while  it  is  precisely  here  that  he  embodies  one  of  those  les- 
sons which  nature  repeats  from  age  to  age,  and  which  is,  per- 


budgett:   the   christian   freeman.       221 

haps,  peculiarly  deserving  of  study  and  of  enforcement  in  our 
day. 

We  must  ask,  first.  What  is  the  general  law  on  this  point : 
how  does  nature  arrange  in  the  matter  1 

In  all  professions  and  trades,  certain  contending  forces  are 
brought  into  play.  No  man  denies  that  the  faculties  of  re- 
spective men,  their  sagacity,  their  energy,  their  perseverance, 
are  different.  Every  profession  is,  in  one  important  and  in- 
variable aspect,  a  form  of  exertion  of  human  faculty,  an  arena 
of  power ;  and  it  is  all  but  implied  in  this,  that  in  every  pro- 
fession there  will  be  degrees  of  success  and  failure.  From 
this  last  circumstance  it  will  be  an  inevitable  result,  that  cer- 
tain persons  find  themselves  surpassed,  beaten,  thwarted,  and 
that  they  feel  pain  in  consequence.  It  is  one  of  the  sad  con- 
sequences of  the  fall,  irremediable  save  by  a  reversal  of  that 
fall,  but,  like  other  such  painful  phenomena,  itself  of  remedial 
tendency  in  the  body  politic,  that  every  man  who  rises  in  any 
profession  must  tread  a  path  more  or  less  bedewed  by  the 
tears  of  those  he  passes  on  his  ascent.  The  incompetent  or 
indolent  soldier  takes  commands  from  his  able  and  active 
comrade  who  has  left  the  ranks  ;  the  able  and  indefatigable 
physician  absorbs  the  practice  of  the  dullard  or  the  empiric ; 
the  lawyer,  whose  logic  is  as  a  Damascus  saber,  and  wlio 
wields  it  like  an  Arab  arm,  condemns  his  heavy-eyed  or  care- 
less brother  to  starve.  There  may  be  no  envy  and  no  hate  ; 
there  may  be  no  feeling  of  indignation,  and  no  affixing  of 
blame  ;  but  there  will  be,  at  least,  the  pain  of  privation,  of 
failure.  More  peculiarly  does  this  apply  to  mercantile  pro- 
fessions. Here  the  precise  mode  in  which  talent  is  brought 
to  bear,  is  in  making  money  :  if  you  are  so  much  abler  than 
your  neighbor,  you  win  so  much  the  more  money  than  he ; 
and,  as  your  relative  winnings  are  drawn  from  a  common 


222       budgett:   the    christian   freeman. 

store^  namely,  the  purse  of  the  public,  the  more  you  have,  the 
less  he  gets.  Depe}:;d  upon  it,  he  will  in  these  circumstances 
feel  "  sere."  It  is  the  producing  of  this  soreness  which  has 
been  objected  to  Budgett ;  we  deem  it  a  necessary  and  salu- 
tary pain,  and  consider  it  just  and  honorable  in  him  to  have 
inflicted  it. 

What,  we  inquire  further,  are  the  components  of  that  forct) 
which  a  man  brings  rightfully  into  the  arena  of  his  profession, 
what  means  is  it  perfectly  honorable  in  him  to  use  for  his  own 
advancement  1  We  answer  simply,  its  components  are  two- 
fold— it  consists  of  capital  and  of  faculty  ;  we  contend  it  is 
his  right  and  duty  to  use  each  to  the  utmost.  In  some  pro- 
fessions, intellectual  power  constitutes  the  whole  force  ;  but  it 
is  not  so  in  commercial  affairs.  It  is  honorable,  as  will  not  be 
questioned,  to  lay  out  at  fair  interest  the  money  or  other  capi- 
tal which  is  yours.  It  is  precisely  as  honorable,  we  contend, 
to  use  to  its  last  item  of  value  the  faculty  which  nature  has 
committed  to  your  charge.  If  you  see  the  gleam  of  a  gold 
vein  where  I  saw  only  clay,  the  reward  is  justly  yours  ;  if  you 
know  the  ground  where  corn  will  grow  better  than  I,  your 
sheaves  must  be  more  numerous  than  mine ;  if  you  have 
stronger  sinew  and  more  perseverance,  and  choose  to  toil  for 
hours  in  the  westering  sun  after  I  have  unyoked  my  team,  you 
must  lay  a  wider  field  under  seed  than  I.  And  no  upright  or 
manly  feeling  in  me  will  permit  me  to  accuse  you  when  you 
thus  work  your  faculties  to  the  utmost ;  the  pearls  are  for  him 
that  can  dive,  the  golden  apples  for  him  that  can  climb  :  I  am 
no  brave  man  if  I  bid  you  bate  your  energies  out  of  pity  or 
misnamed  courtesy,  and  if  you  listen  to  such  request,  you  in- 
cur the  responsibility  of  showing,  at  the  last,  a  return  on  your 
talents  not  so  great  as  He  will  know  to  be  possible,  who  gave 
you  them  to  occupy  till  His  coming.     Nature,  and  we  use  the 


budgett:   the   christian   freeman.       223 

word  tft  designate  reverently  the  method  of  His  working  who 
is  natures  power,  intends  every  faculty  to  be  used  to  the  ut- 
most. A  man  who  expects  less  from  his  competitors  than  an 
unsparing  use  of  all  their  means,  is  a  coward  ;  a  man  who  aims 
at  having  more  than  the  full  use  of  his  own,  is  a  churl. 

There  are  two  j^ositive  and  conclusive  proofs  that  this  is  na- 
ture's intention,  which  we  shall  presently  adduce.  But,  first, 
we  would  ask,  does  not  this  view  of  the  case  accord  with  the 
general  feeling  and  sense  of  men  ?  Is  it  not  a  bitter  insult  to 
a  man  who  is  on  an  equal  footing  with  yourself,  to  temper 
your  powers  till  they  can  act  without  in  any  way  annoying 
him,  to  disguise  your  faculties  that  he  may  not  feel  his  weak- 
ness ?  Is  it  not  recognized,  that  if  one  man  sees  where  he  can 
make  a  bargain  honorably  and  openly  where  another  man  is 
blind,  and,  instead  of  availing  himself  of  the  opportunity,  ap- 
prises his  neighbor  of  its  whereabouts,  he  does  virtually  give 
the  latter  a  dole  1  Assuredly,  there  is  a  distinction  drawn 
between  that  profit  which  results  from  the  dealing  of  one  man 
wnth  another  of  a  purely  mercantile  nature,  and  for  which  no 
thanks  are  looked  for,  however  great  it  may  be,  and  the  profit 
for  which  one  has  to  thank  another,  which  is  a  favor  and  gift 
in  all  essential  points,  however  slight. 

Leaving  this,  however,  we  offer  these  two  considerations  as 
demonstrating  the  flict  that  nature  means  and  commands  men, 
without  asking  any  questions,  and  in  every  department  of  af- 
fairs, to  use  their  talents  to  the  utmost. 

The  first  is.  That  this  is  nature's  method  of  spurring  on  the 
indolent,  and  haviiig  her  work  rightly  done.  Every  true  man 
is  a  whip  in  nature's  hand  to  scourge  on  the  laggard ;  if  he 
works  rightly,  he  must  be  so.  And  if  there  is  whipping,  there 
must  be  feeling.  What  is  it  which  keeps  the  human  race  in 
progress  at  all  ?  what  is  it  v  hich  prevents  our  sitting  down  by 


224         BUDQETi:     THE     CHRISTIAN    FREEMAN. 

the  wayside  and  falling  into  a  half-sleep,  and,  finding  what  will 
merely  suffice  for  an  animal  existence,  moving  onward  no 
more  ?  Is  it  not  just  that,  at  intervals,  in  the  several  corps  of 
the  army,  a  strong  and  determined  spirit  starts  up,  who  will 
strike  forward  with  new  speed,  and,  despite  the  remonstrance 
of  the  slothful,  animate  the  whole  battalion  to  new  life  and 
energy  ?  Nature  makes  you  pay  for  every  hour  of  sleep  or 
pleasure  beyond  the  number  she  approves  ;  and  he  whom  she 
appoints  to  receive  for  her  the  payment,  is  the  man  who  has 
worked  while  you  have  slept  or  danced. 

But,  secondly,  it  is  found  that  nature  is  here  kind  also ;  that, 
however  individuals  may  smart  and  grumble,  this  method  sub- 
serves most  effectually  the  interests  of  the  majority.  Her  aim 
is  thoroughness  of  work  and  amount  of  produce ;  when  these 
are  attained,  the  interests  of  the  common  weal  are  best  con- 
sulted. And,  to  reach  this,  it  is  necessary  that  all  the  faculty 
of  the  community  be  at  work,  and  to  its  utmost  strain.  One 
man  can  not  possibly  restrain  the  honorable  action  of  his  pow- 
ers for  the  sake  of  the  feelings  of  another,  without  the  loss  of 
a  certain  amount  of  that  force  by  which  nature  carries  on  her 
operations,  and  provides  for  her  children :  kindness  must  blunt 
no  sword  or  scythe,  or  it  will  cause  ten  to  weep  instead  of 
one. 

The  idea  of  charity,  we  conclude,  is  alien  to  the  idea  of 
trade ;  all  that  can  be  demanded,  under  the  name  of  mercan- 
tile honor,  is  simple  justice. 

We  are  happy  to  be  able  to  illustrate  these  remarks,  espe- 
cially the  second  of  our  proofs,  that  nature  intends  no  respect 
to  be  shown  to  individual  feeling  in  mercantile  competition,  by 
a  glance  at  the  general  effect  of  the  success  of  Samuel  Budgett 
in  the  south-west  of  England.  That  effect  was  a  general  in- 
crease in  the  animation  and  vigor  of  his  order  of  commercial 


budgett:   the   christian   freeman.       225 

operations  over  th4  district.  The  customers  caught  the  spirit 
of  those  who  had  so  ably  secured  their  custom ;  the  firms  still 
able  to  contend  bestirred  themselves ;  there  was  new  activity 
every  where.  In  one  word,  nature's  work  was  better  done  in 
those  quarters  than  formerly.  Mr.  Arthur  appears  to  be 
all  unconscious  of  that  very  important  aspect  of  the  opera- 
tions of  the  commercial  class  in  every  country  which  we  have 
indicated.  He  recognizes  the  duties  of  each  man  to  provide 
for  himself;  he  recognizes  the  duty  of  every  man  to  "  adapt 
his  services  to  the  general  good ;"  but  he  does  not  perceive 
that  in  the  thorough  performance  of  this  last  task,  the  man 
may  find  it  impossible  to  avoid  giving  pain  to  certain  of  his 
own  class.  The  confusion  into  which  he  falls  arises  from  his 
failing  to  distinguish  the  "  general  interest"  of  the  public,  as 
contrasted  with  the  individual  interest  of  members  of  the  class 
of  merchants.  He  starts  with  a  condemnation  of  Budgett  for 
inflicting  "soreness"  on  those  with  whom  he  dealt;  but  he 
never  says,  and  his  whole  book  is  an  affirmation  of  the  oppo- 
site, that  he  did  not  work  as  effectually  for  the  public  good  as 
was  possible.  It  was  his  brother  merchants  alone  who  suffered ; 
it  was  in  the  maket  he  was  harsh ;  it  was  the  extreme  thorough- 
ness of  his  performance  of  that  task  which  Mr.  Arthur  accu- 
rately defines  as  the  merchant's  in  the  social  system,  the  task 
of  "  directly  conveying  the  creatures  of  God  into  the  hands" 
of  those  for  whom  they  are  intended,  which  made  him  at  times 
obnoxious  to  those  who  performed  the  same  task,  from  what- 
ever cause,  not  quite  so  thoroughly. 

We  recognize,  in  fact,  here,  the  radical  strength  and  stamina 
of  Budgett's  character :  we  point  to  the  circumstances  urged 
in  objection,  as  conclusive  proof  that  his  mind  was  hale  and  of 
strong  fiber ;  that  vital  Christianity  had  introduced  no  softness 
or  incapacity  for  working  to  the  utmost  of  his  powers  into  liis 
10* 


22Q      budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

axture.  Mr.  Arthur  informs  us  his  aim  was  unimpeachable 
honor  and  his  word  gold.  We  know,  too,  that  money  was  not 
his  object ;  that  wealth  was  a  matter  for  which  he  cared  very- 
little.  The  proof  of  tnis  important  point  is  perfect.  He  did 
not  cling,  with  miserly  tenacity,  to  business  to  the  last ;  he 
took  matters  quietly,  and  strove  after  no  further  extension  when 
life  was  still  strong  in  him.  After  he  had  ceased  to  attend 
with  his  old  impelling  vigor  to  the  affairs  of  the  firm,  he  heard 
some  one  say  he  wished  for  more  money.  "  Do  you  *?"  he  ex- 
claimed ;  "  then  I  do  not ;  I  have  quite  enough.  But  if  I  did 
wish  for  more,  I  should  get  it."  On  his  death-bed,  when  his 
voice  was  tremulous  with  the  last  weakness,  he  deliberately 
said,  "  Riches  I  have  had  as  much  as  my  heart  could  desire,  but 
I  never  felt  any  pleasure  in  them  for  their  own  sake,  only  so 
far  as  they  enabled  me  to  give  pleasure  to  others,''  etc. ;  and 
we  know  him  to  have  been  a  man,  out  of  the  market,  of  a 
generosity  which  might  be  deemed  extravagant.  His  brother 
merchants  did,  unquestionably,  at  times  feel  themselves  disa- 
greeably overborne,  did  experience  an  uneasy  sensation,  and 
call  him  keen  and  harsh ;  it  is  always  unpleasant  to  pay  trib- 
ute, and  these  men  were  commanded  by  nature  to  pay  tribute 
to  Budgett  as  their  king.  And  why  did  he,  who  had  no  par- 
ticular desire  for  money,  and  an  acute  feeling  of  any  pain  he 
gave,  thus  permit  himself,  we  can  not  doubt  consciously,  to  pain 
his  brother  merchants '?  It  was  the  strong  instinct  of  the  born 
merchant  in  his  heart,  the  strong  instinct  of  the  true  man.  He 
could  not  dishonor  his  competitors  by  supposing  them  incapa- 
ble of  the  stern  joy  of  waiTiors  in  worthy  foemen ;  he  could 
not  rein  his  steeds  that  stumbling  or  laggard  hacks  might  reach 
the  goal  before  him ;  he  could  not,  without  intense  suffering, 
curb  the  faculties  nature  had  given  him,  or  turn  them  from 
their  work.     They  felt  sore,  to  be  sure.     Did  the  sectioners 


budgett:   the    christian   freeman.       227 

feel  soro  when  they  arrived  at  the  camp  of  Sablons,  "  some  min- 
utes" too  late,  and  found  that  Napoleon  had  clutched  the  guns  1 
But  was  it  not  right  that  the  quick  mind  and  ready  hand  should 
have  them  1  In  the  market,  Budgett  knew  instinctively  that 
integrity  ruled,  that  charity  and  favor  were  alien  to  the  place ; 
had  he  won  counters  instead  of  guineas,  he  would  have  acted 
just  in  the  same  way.  We  can  imagine  him  even  having  had 
compunctious  touches,  but  a  sterner  and  healthier  feeling  over- 
ruled pity,  and  held  it  firmly  in  its  place. 

"I'd  give  tke  lands  of  Deloraine 
Brave  Musgrave  were  alive  again ;" 

SO  said  generous  William,  although  he  had  just  explained  that, 
were  Musgrave  actually  alive  again,  it  would  be  necessary  for 
him,  by  the  rules  of  Border  honor,  at  once  to  rekill  him. 

Our  whole  argument,  in  defense  of  Budgett,  falls  to  the 
ground,  if  it  can  be  proved  that,  in  his  habitual  dealing,  there 
was  the  slightest  infraction  of  equity,  the  slightest  departure 
from  the  rules  of  the  game ;  but,  when  we  perceive  that  all 
the  pain  occasioned  to  his  rivals  in  the  market  can  be  accounted 
for  in  the  simple,  rational,  and  probable  way  we  have  seen, 
since  we  are  absolutely  certain  he  had  no  particular  love  of 
money,  and  since  we  find  his  hand  to  the  full  as  ready  to  give 
as  to  gain,  we  confidently  declare  his  sharp,  or,  as  we  should 
prefer  saying,  his  thorough  dealing  in  business  to  have  been  no 
deduction  from  his  benevolence,  but  to  have  been  a  testimony 
of  remarkable  point  and  conclusiveness  to  the  general  force 
and  ability  of  his  character.  To  any  man  that  needed  a  help- 
ing hand,  we  can  not  doubt  he  would  have  extended  one,  but 
if  you  met  him  on  the  field,  you  were  foot  to  foot  and  eye  to 
e  e  opposed,  and  mercy  could  only  come  in  the  form  of  con- 


228       bujgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

tempt.  Saladln  sent  Coeur  de  Lion  a  horse  that  he  might  fight 
like  a  knight,  but  did  he  bate  his  saber  when  he  met  him  on 
the  battle-plain  1 

We  have  thus,  then,  got,  so  to  speak,  the  framework  of  our 
man  ;  we  find  that  it  is  the  unflawed  iron  of  integrity,  clear  in- 
sight, and  energy ;  he  is  a  man  who  can  thoroughly  work. 

But  we  saw  that,  in  his  boyhood,  there  was  not  only  a  stern 
but  a  gentle  aspect  of  his  character ;  we  may  find  now  that 
this  iron  framework  of  his  manhood  is  wreathed  with  pleasant 
verdure  and  dewy  flowers.  We  have  seen  him  when  he  had 
simply  to  measure  his  strength  ;  we  must  survey  him  now  as 
a  master,  as  a  member  of  society  philanthropically  desirous  of 
removing  its  evils,  and  as  a  flither. 

Entering  the  central  establishment  where,  as  we  have  seen, 
hundreds  of  men  are  employed,  we  find  that  the  whole  works 
with  faultless  regularity.  The  genius  of  English  industry 
seems  to  have  chosen  the  place  as  a  temple.  There  is  no  fuss, 
little  noise  ;  there  is  no  haste — no  time  for  that.  The  face  of 
every  workman  shows  that  he  may  not  linger ;  its  firm  lines, 
at  the  same  time  declare  that  he  has  no  wish  to  do  so.  Hearty 
activity,  healthful  contented  diligence  are  seen  on  every  hand. 
The  immense  daily  business  is  timeously  transacted,  and  the 
liours  of  evening  see  the  place  shut  and  silent. 

Samuel  Budgett  is  the  mainspring  of  the  whole  vast  machine. 
Under  the  middle  size,  with  strong  brows,  open  forehead,  and 
lower  features  firm  and  clearly  cut,  he  may  at  once  be  dis- 
cerned to  be  a  man  who  can  dare  and  do :  his  "  quick  brown 
eye"  glances  everywhere,  and  overlooks  nothing ;  its  light  makes 
the  wheels  go  faster.  He  speaks  a  word  of  encouragement  to 
the  active,  he  sends  an  electric  look  to  the  indolent;  it  is 
plain  his  authority  is  unquestionable,  and  that  he  retains  and 
uses  it  without  an  effort.     Bungling  of  no  sort,  be  it  from 


budgett:    the    christian   freeman.       229 

want  of  power  or  want  of  will,  can  live  in  his  glance  ;  he  can 
detect  falsehood  lurking  in  the  depths  of  an  eye,  and  vailing 
itself  in  the  blandest  smile  ;  he  has  a  tact  and  ready  invention 
which  find  a  quiet  road  to  every  secret ;  only  perfect  thorough- 
ness of  work  and  perfect  honesty  of  heart  can  stand  before  him. 
Yet  the  ki.idly  and  approving  is  evidently  his  most  natural  and 
cherished  look  ;  he  speaks  many  a  word  of  sympathy"  and 
kindness ;  the  respect  and  perfect  deference  which  wait  on  his 
steps  are  tempered  by  affection. 

We  find  that,  as  a  master,  he  is,  first  of  all,  thorough.  His 
men  have  a  profound  knowledge  that  he  is  not  to  be  trifled 
with.  The  incompetent,  the  indolent,  are  discharged.  A  man 
must  perform  what  he  has  taken  in  hand,  or  he  must  go. 
"  Why,  sir,"  said  one  who  had  been  long  in  his  service,  "  I  do 
believe  as  he  would  get,  ay,  just  twice  as  much  work  out  o'  a 
man  in  a  week  as  another  master."  This  power  of  infusing  a  true 
working  spirit  into  men  explains  his  whole  success.  Conceive 
every  man  he  employed  working  thoroughly,  no  workman 
dawdling,  no  traveler  loitering,  every  customer  finding  him- 
self punctually  and  perfectly  attended  to  ;  every  thing  becomes 
then  conceivable.  He  has  the  gift  of  knowing  men  ;  for  him 
who  would  prosper  in  any  sort  of  practical  endeavor,  it  is  the 
indispensable  gift.  Upon  this  thoroughness  and  penetration  it 
was  of  course  again  an  attendant,  that  pain  was  felt  in  certain 
quarters ;  rotten  branches,  ineffective  workmen,  could  not  be 
cut  away  without  crashing,  and  crackling :  here,  too,  we  meet 
that  fine  confirmatory  evidence  of  his  real  power  and  energy 
that  he  awakened  complaints  on  the  part  of  those  in  whom 
these  were  lacking. 

We  learn,  next,  that  he  has  a  warm,  and  honest  sympathy 
with  his  men.  It  is  not  the  result  of  their  work  in  the  shape 
of  his  own  profit  which  gratifies  him,  so  much  as  the  satisfac- 


230       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

tion  and  advantage  of  all  who  work  along  with  him.  We  find 
no  niggardliness,  no  appearance  of  strain,  in  his  efforts  to  attain 
wealth.  If  he  gets  more  work  out  of  men  than  other  masters, 
his  employed  get  more  from  him  in  the  best  forms  than  other 
men.  At  the  time  of  his  entering  partnership,  the  working 
hours  are  from  six  in  the  morning  to  nine  at  night.  This  goes 
against  the  new  partner's  grain.  ".I  do  not  like  to  see  you  here," 
he  would  say  to  the  employed  ;  "  I  want  to  see  you  at  home  : 
we  must  get  done  sooner."  Dismissal  at  half-past  eight  is  at- 
tempted, and  the  men  are  greatly  relieved.  But  this  is  only  a 
commencement.  If  there  are  too  few  men,  more  can  be  added ; 
if  there  is  trifling,  men  must  go  altogether.  As  the  business 
enlarges,  the  time  shortens,  and  Samuel  does  not  rest  until  he 
sees  his  men  all  trooping  off  cheerily  to  their  families  at  five  of 
half-past  five  in  the  evening.  Keep  these  two  parallel  attain- 
ments in  view,  when  you  estimate  the  generosity  and  mercantile 
honor  of  Budgett.  There  is,  in  the  establishment,  a  regular 
system  of  fines ;  but  the  head  or  heads  pay  most,  and  the 
whole  goes  to  a  sick  fund.  There  is  an  annual  festival  given 
to  the  men ;  good  cheer,  athletic  games,  and  a  certain  amount, 
we  trust  moderate,  of  speech-making,  speed  the  hours ;  the 
Eev.  Mr.  Carvasso,  hearing  our  merchant  speak  on  one  such 
occasion,  thinks  his  address  of  "  an  extraordinary  character," 
wishes  it  had  been  printed,  and  adds,  "  Except  on  that  occasion 
I  never  heard  him  come  out  in  a  set  public  address,  but  the 
talent  then  displayed  convinced  me  of  the  grasp  of  his  mind, 
and  how  greatly  some  had  mistaken  him."  There  is  a  system- 
atic distiibution  of  small  rewards  from  week  to  week  ;  Bud- 
gett stands  at  a  certain  outlet  to  the  premises  with  a  pocketful 
of  little  packages  containing  money,  and  slips  one  into  each 
man's  hand  as  he  passes  out ;  "  One  would  find  he  had  a  pres- 
ent of  five  shillings,  another  of  three,  another  of  half-a-crown ;" 


budgett:   the   chrisiian    freeman.       231 

the  gift  is  graduated  by  respective  merit.  "  Ah,  sir,"  exclaims 
an  eld  informant,  "  he  was  a  man  as  had  no  pleasure  in  muck- 
in'  up  money  ;  why,  sir,  he  would  often  in  that  way  give,  ay, 
I  believe,  twenty  pounds  on  a  Friday  night — well,  at  any  rate 
fifteen  pounds."  Besides  this,  certain  of  the  employed  are 
made  directly  to  feel  their  interests  in  the  success  of  the  busi- 
ness. "  When  a  year  wound  up  well,  the  pleasure  was  not  all 
with  the  principals  ;  several  of  those  whose  diligence  and 
talent  had  a  share  in  gaining  the  result,  found  that  they  had  also 
a  share  in  the  reward."  "  One,"  Mr.  Arthur  goes  on  to  say, 
"  after  describing  the  pains  Mr.  Budgett  had  taken  to  make 
him  master  of  his  own  branch  of  the  business,  and  how,  when 
satisfied  with  his  fitness,  he  had  devolved  upon  him  important 
responsibilities,  said,  with  a  fine  feeling  which  I  should  love  to 
see  masters  generally  kindle  among  those  in  their  employment, 
*  And  he  never  had  a  good  year,  but  I  was  the  better  for  it 
when  stock-taking  came.'  " 

But,  last  and  most  important  of  all,  Budgett,  in  his  capacity 
as  master,  is  a  religious  man — a  real,  earnest  Christian.  We 
have  not  now  to  ask  whether  his  energy  is  unimpeded  and  un- 
relaxed,  whether  his  powers  have  their  full  swing ;  but  it  is 
important  to  learn  of  what  sort  his  religion  is,  and  to  what 
extent  it  pervades  his  life,  that  we  may  know  whether  it  is  of 
a  nature  to  be  pronounced  efiete — whether  it  is,  on  the  one 
hand,  a  deistic  fashionable  assent  to  Christianity,  or,  on  the 
other,  a  cramped  fanaticism  or  bigotry,  not  blending  in  kindly 
union  with  the  general  modes  of  his  existence.  We  know 
that  in  his  case  Christianity  has  never  been  intellectually 
doubted,  and  he  may  therefore  be  taken  as  a  good  example 
of  a  thorough  English  merchant,  who  still,  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  draws  the  vital  strength  of  his  character  from  that 
Christian  religion  in  which  he  has  been  born,  and  which  he 


232       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

has  unconsci  3usly  drunk  in.  We  discover  that  his  religion  is 
of  that  perse  nal  penetrating  order  which  has  in  all  times  char- 
acterized men  who,  even  among  Christians,  have  been  recog- 
nized as  such  in  a  peculiar  sense  ;  of  that  sort  which  made 
Bunyan  weep  in  anguish,  and  at  which  the  merely  respectable 
person  in  all  ages  laughs  ;  of  that  sort  against  which  Sydney 
Smith  aimed  his  melancholy  raillery,  in  unaffected  wonderment 
at  its  refusing  to  him  the  name  of  Christian  minister  or  Chris- 
tun  man. 

This  determined  merchant,  whom  we  have  seen  pushing  on 
to  fortune  through  the  press  of  vainly  opposing  rivals,  humbles 
himself  daily  before  God,  searches  his  soul  for  secret  sins,  finds 
cause  for  keenest  sorrow  in  the  turning  of  God's  countenance 
away  from  him.  This  Budgett  can  weep  like  a  child,  or  like 
Bunyan,  or  an  old  Ironside,  for  his  shortcomings.  Christianity 
is  to  him  as  fresh  as  it  was  to  Peter  when  Christ  commanded 
him  to  feed  His  lambs;  its  salvation  is  to  him  as  clear  a 
reality  as  to  Stephen  when  he  saw  heaven  opened.  And  it 
does  blend  in  the  kindliest  union  with  his  whole  character  and 
actions ;  he  feels  that  a  Christian  must  be  one  all  in  all ;  he 
lives  as  if  in  the  continual  sense  of  having  been  made  by  Christ 
one  of  God's  priests  upon  earth.  His  natural  tact  and  power 
of  winding  himself  into  close  conversation,  so  as  to  get  at 
men's  inmost  hearts,  are  brought  into  the  service  of  the  Gos- 
pel. In  an  unostentatious,  quiet  way,  he  manages  to  urge  its 
claims  on  his  men,  by  casual  words,  by  little  snatches  of  con- 
versation, in  any  moment  when  he  has  them  alone.  Every 
man  in  this  establishment  is  perpetually  reminded  that  he  is 
considered  by  his  master  an  immortal  being,  and  feels  that  all 
temporary  differences  between  them  are  merged  in  the  sub- 
lime unities  in  which  Christianity  embraces  all  human  rela- 
tions.    Once  a  man  came  begging  employment  of  him ;  the 


buD'5ett:   the   christian   freeman.       233 

wife  jf  the  former  thus  related  the  result : — "  I  shall  never  for- 
get my  husband's  feelings  when  he  came  in  after  having  seen 
Mr.  Budgctt  for  the  first  time.  He  wept  like  a  child  ;  indeed, 
we  both  wept,  for  it  was  so  long  since  any  body  had  been  kind 
to  us.  Mr.  Budgett  had  been  speaking  to  him  like  a  father  ; 
but  what  affected  him  most  was  this — when  he  had  signed  the 
agreement,  ]\Ir.  Budgctt  took  him  from  the  counting-house  into 
a  small  parlor  in  his  own  house,  and  offered  up  a  prayer  for 
him  and  his  flimily."  The  young  men  resident  on  the  premises 
have  separate  rooms,  for  the  express  end  that  they  may  be 
able  to  seek  God  in  private.  There  is  daily  prayer  on  the 
premises :  every  day,  in  the  morning,  the  whole  concrrn  is,  as 
it  were,  brought  directly  under  the  eye  of  God — Hi^,  authority 
over  it  recognized,  and  His  blessing  invoked.  And  every 
year  at  stock-taking,  ere  Samuel  had  become  sole  head,  it  was 
observed  that  the  two  brothers,  when  it  was  ascertained  what 
precise  progress  had  been  made,  retired  into  a  private  room, 
and  there  joined  together  in  prayer.  It  is  a  Christian  mercan- 
tile establishment. 

And  what  is  the  result,  on  the  whole  ?  Tliere  is  the  pro- 
gress we  have  seen — a  progress  which  we  can  now  to  some 
extent  understand ;  his  neighbor  tradesmen  are  heard  to 
"  speak  as  if  he  rose  by  magic,"  and  to  insinuate  that  "  there 
is  some  deep  mystery  in  his  affairs  :"  w^e  have  some  idea  of 
his  enchantments.  But  the  progress  is  not  all.  There  is  an- 
other circumstance,  of  which  we  have  already  let  fall  certain 
hints,  but  which  is  deserving  of  special  attention.  It  is  the 
flict  that  there  is  diffused,  through  the  whole  body  of  the  em- 
ployed, a  loyal  zeal  for  the  success  of  the  business — that  they 
are  united  by  sympathy  in  a  common  aim — that  they  feel  as 
true  mariners  for  the  honor  of  their  ship,  as  true  soldiers  for 
the  flime  of  their  regiment.     His  men,  we  hear,  are  "  person- 


234         B7DGETT:     THE     CHRISTIAN    FREEMAN. 

ally  attached"  to  Budgett ;  they  like  to  work  with  him  and  for 
him ;  they  are  proud  of  what  has  been  done,  and  proud  of 
having  contr.buted  to  its  achievement.  This  is  a  notable 
fact.  With  it,  as  the  crown  of  the  whole,  we  complete  our 
survey  of  Budgett  in  the  capacity  of  master. 

But  we  can  not  at  once  quit  the  subject :  we  think  we  find 
here  certain  lessons  clearly  legible,  and  of  vital  concernment, 
touching  what  may  be  called  the  practical  philosophy  of  social 
life  in  this  our  age. 

It  being  sufficiently  evident  that  feudal  tenures  and  powers 
have  in  our  age  ceased  to  exist,  and  the  first  general  glance  at 
our  social  arrangements  seeming  to  reveal  "  cash-payment"  to 
be  the  "  sole  nexus,"  the  universal  connecting  medium  between 
the  classes  of  society  which  employ  and  those  which  are  em- 
ployed, Mr.  Carlyle  and  others  have  pronounced  on  the  case 
in  contempt,  wrath,  and  lamentation.  In  a  pamphlet  recently 
published  by  Mr.  Carlyle,  we  find  the  objectionable  aspect  of 
the  case  finely  embodied  in  a  high  personage  who  complains  to 
the  writer.  Being  very  philanthropic,  and  anxious,  if  con- 
science and  common  sense  permit,  to  condole  with  our  dis- 
tressed fellow-creatures,  we  must  accord  a  hearing  to  his  com- 
plaints.   "  Drops  of  compassion  tremble  on  our  eyelids,"  etc. : — 

"  The  Duke  of  Trumps,"  says  Mr.  Carlyle,  "  who  sometimes 
does  me  the  honor  of  a  little  conversation,  owned  that  the  state 
of  his  domestic  service  was  by  no  means  satisfactory  to  the  hu- 
man mind.  '  Five-and-forty  of  them,'  said  his  Grace,  '  really, 
I  suppose,  the  cleverest  in  the  market,  for  there  is  no  limit  to 
the  wages.  I  often  think  how  many  quiet  families,  all  down 
to  the  basis  of  society,  I  have  disturbed,  in  attracting  gradu- 
ally, by  higher  and  higher  ofiers,  that  set  of  fellows  to  me ; 
and  what  the  use  of  them  is  when  here !  I  feed  them  like 
aldermen,  pay  them  a»  if  they  were  sages  and  heroes.     Sam- 


budoett:   the   christian   freeman.       235 

uel  Johnson's  wages,  at  the  very  last  and  best,  as  I  have  heard 
you  say,  were  £300  or  £500  a-ycar ;  and  Jellysnob,  my  but- 
ler, who  indeed  is  clever,  gets,  I  believe,  more  than  the  highest 
of  these  sums.  And,  shall  I  own  it  to  you  1  In  my  young 
days,  with  one  ^•alet,  I  had  more  trouble  saved  me,  more  help 
afforded  me  to  live,  actually  more  of  my  will  accomplished, 
than  from  these  forty-five  I  now  get,  or  ever  shall.  It  is  all 
a  serious  comedy — what  you  call  a  melancholy  sham.  Most 
civil,  obsequious,  and  indeed  expert  fellows  these ;  but  bid 
one  of  them  step  out  of  his  regulated  sphere  on  your  behalf! 
An  iron  law  presses  on  us  all  here — on  them  and  on  me.  In 
my  own  house,  how  much  of  my  will  can  I  have  done,  dare  I 
propose  to  have  done  '?  Prudence,  on  my  part,  is  prescribed 
by  a  jealous  and  ridiculous  point-of-honor  attitude  on  theirs. 
They  lie  here  more  like  a  troop  of  foreign  soldiers  that  had 
invaded  me,  than  a  body  of  servants  I  had  hired.  At  free 
quarters  ;  we  have  strict  laws  of  war  established  between  us ; 
they  make  their  salutes,  and  do  certain  bits  of  specified  work, 
with  many  becks  and  scrapings  ;  but  as  to  service,  properly  so 

called !     I  lead  the  life  of  a  servant,  sir ;  it  is  I  that  am 

a  slave ;  and  oflen  I  think  of  packing  the  whole  brotherhood 
of  them  out  of  doors  one  good  day,  and  retiring  to  furnished 
lodgings,  but  have  never  done  it  yet !'  Such  was  the  confes- 
sion of  his  Grace." 

"For,"  adds  Mr.  Carlyle,  "  indeed,  in  the  long  run,  it  is  not 
possible  to  buy  obedience  with  money." 

Your  complaint,  we  must  confess,  addressing  his  Grace,  is 
indeed  pitiful.  Your  domestics  look  upon  you  manifestly  as  a 
mere  dispenser  of  good  things  ;  they  know  you  have  money, 
and  :hat  by  a  little  juggling  they  can  get  it  out  of  your  hands; 
they  laugh  at  you  in  their  sleeves ;  you  are  among  them  as 
the  returning  lord  in  Don  Juan  among  the  groups  that  feasted 


236       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

at  his  expense ;  in  one  word,  they  make  a  fool  of  you.  Now 
this  is  never  done,  your  Grace,  unless  nature  gives  material 
assistance.  You  perceive  that  the  sailors  of  a  seventy-four  do 
not  make  a  fool  of  their  captain  ;  Budgett's  men,  we  find,  made 
no  fool  of  him ;  and  do  you  think  that  the  man  to  w^hom  you 
confess  would  be  made  a  fool  of  in  that  style,  were  he  in  your 
place  ?  He  has  made  something  very  like  an  assertion,  that 
you  are  a  "  reed  shaken  in  the  wind ;"  he  thinks,  we  used  to 
understand,  that  your  Grace's  coat  and  badges  were  "  torn  in 
a  scuffle"  somewhere  about  1789 ;  we  think  your  resort  for 
consolation  a  little  strange.  What  does  your  Grace  want  1 
Would  you  have  your  fellow-creatures  bow  down  to  your 
coronet  1  They  say  it  is  of  faded  tinsel.  Would  you  have 
them  reverence  the  face  of  which  you  are  the  "  tenth  trans- 
mitter f  They  say,  "  O,  just  look  at  it ;  it  is  uncommonly 
foolish."  Would  you  like  to  have  the  gallows-tree  on  your 
lawn,  and  manacles  in  a  dungeon  under  your  hall  1  Like 
enough ;  but  these  are  precisely  w^hat  your  Grace  never  shall 
get ;  reach  forth  your  hand  to  them,  and  see  v>diether  a  red 
stream  will  not  flow  to  wash  your  parchments  very  white ! 
Your  Grace  finds  it  too  much  to  remember  the  duties  for  which 
you  have  hired  your  servants  ;  you  have  no  tact  or  authority 
to  rule  men,  no  dignified  self-respecting  sympathy  to  win 
them ;  you  fancy  it  is  the  gold  that  prevents  your  being 
honored  ;  it  is  no  such  thing ;  the  dying  Napoleon  awed  men 
by  the  power  of  his  eye  when  his  tongue  was  already  silent, 
but  men  of  your  stamp  were  never  truly  obeyed  since  the 
world  began.  Not  even  a  gallows  would  help  you ;  it  is  a 
hopeless  case.  And  we  regard  it  as  exactly  as  it  should  be  ;  like 
master,  like  man.  Your  afiliction  administers  to  us  soft  delec- 
tation ;  we  should  deem  it  treacherous  to  our  time  to  pity  you. 
We  give  you  sixpence ! 


budgett:   the   christian   freeman.       237 

Tlie  case  is  siir.ple  enough  ;  the  phenomenon  need  not  startle 
us.  The  old  obedience  has  certainly  passed  away  ;  and  true 
it  is  that  obedience  has  never  been,  and  can  never  be,  bought 
by  money.  What  then  1  There  is  a  neiv  obedience  possible. 
Thanks  to  the  French  Revolution,  thanks,  whatever  its  evils, 
to  advancing  democracy,  that  it  has  struck,  as  by  a  universal 
electric  shock,  into  the  heart  of  humanity,  the  idea,  to  be  ex- 
tinguished never  again  but  to  work  itself  more  and  more  into 
life  and  development,  that  no  parchment  written  by  human 
hand,  no  gold  dug  from  earthly  mine,  can  give  a  man  a  title 
to  obedience.  That  title  must  be  written  with  other  than  hu- 
man ink,  bought  with  other  than  earthly  gold.  It  must  be 
written  on  the  brow  in  lines  of  strength  and  thoughtfulness,  it 
must  be  seen  on  the  lip,  where  earnest  self-respect,  and  habitual 
&elf-command,  and  resolution  that  can  die,  have  displaced  van- 
ity, sensuality  and  pride ;  it  must  glow,  with  a  clear  and 
ethereal  fullness  as  of  heaven's  sanctioning  light,  from  the  un- 
agitated  eye,  in  the  calmness  of  comprehending  knowledge,  the 
deliberate  energy  of  justice,  the  disarming  magic  of  love,  the 
constraining  majesty  of  godliness.  As  never  before,  all  men 
are  now  flung  on  their  individuality  ;  obedience  is  seen  to  be 
a  thing  beyond  the  reach  of  purchase,  the  possibility  of  trans- 
mission ;  if  you  can  rule  men,  they  will  obey  you  ;  if  you  can 
not,  there  is  no  help.  Look  into  that  establishment  of  Bud- 
gett's  once  more.  What  tie  subsists  between  him  and  his 
men  '?  The  only  visible  tie  is  of  gold ;  he  pays  them  certain 
moneys,  and  they  work  for  him  in  return ;  their  right  to  stay, 
and  his  right  to  retain  them,  are  precisely  equal.  Is  he  not, 
then,  their  master "?  He  can  show  no  patent  of  nobility  unless  he 
has  one  from  "Almighty  God ;"  he  was  rocked  in  no  ducal  cradle, 
he  wears  no  feudal  coronet,  beneath  his  mansion  is  no  dungeon. 
Yet  is  he  not  a  master  1      Shall  we  say  that  the  obedience 


238       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

which  waits  upon  his  steps  is  of  degraded  quality,  or  unworthy 
of  the  name,  because  it  is  expressed  in  the  alacrity  of  the  open 
and  manly  forehead,  the  willing  sympathy,  unshaded  by  fear 
and  untainted  by  sycophancy,  of  the  freeman's  kindling  eye  ? 
Shall  we  say  that  the  workman  no  longer  renders  to  his  natural 
and  equal  master  a  service  and  homage,  as  precious  and  sincere 
as  those  of  the  serf  who  was  predestined,  ere  his  birth,  to  fol- 
low his  chief  whithersoever  his  bare  will  ordained,  because  the 
honeysuckles  of  his  cottage  wrap  his  own  inviolable  castle,  and 
free-born  children  gambol  round  his  knee  1  That  he  toils  is 
no  disgrace ;  it  is  appointed  him  by  no  injustice  of  man,  but 
by  the  beneficent,  though  stern,  decree  of  nature  ;  and  his  even- 
ing may  be  as  glad  and  tranquil  when  the  day's  work  is  over, 
his  sleep  as  sweet  ere  he  goes  forth  to  labor,  his  self-respect, 
his  independence,  his  bold  uncowering  truthfulness,  in  one 
word,  his  whole  inheritance  both  of  duty  and  reward,  as  rich 
in  the  essential  bounties  of  freedom  as  those  of  his  master. 
Some  men  must  ever  ride  in  the  car  of  civilization,  while  others 
drag  it.  The  old  reins  by  which  men  were  guided  have  been 
wrenched  from  the  hands  of  the  drivers ;  the  drivers  them- 
selves have,  in  some  places,  been  rolled  in  the  dust,  and  tram- 
pled in  their  gore  ;  but  the  fate  of  the  French  nobility  is  not 
necessarily  to  be  universal ;  a  strong  and  wise  man  can  yet 
take  the  seat,  and  with  new  reins — the  golden  chords  of  love, 
the  viewless  chains  of  sympathy — still  guide  and  control  men ; 
we  see  Budgett,  a  man  born  in  poverty,  do  so  with  easy  and 
natural  effort.  Why  look  back"?  Why  not  rather  charge 
ourselves  than  our  time  1  Why  perpetually  gaze  with  re- 
verted visage  on  the  coffined  Past  *?  That  lingering  red  is  not 
the  flush  of  health,  that  tranquil  and  smiling  slumber  is  not 
the  repose  of  gathering  energy ;  it  is  the  stillness  and  rigid 
molding  of  death  that  are  on  that  face ;  no  resurrection  ever 


budgett:   the   christian   freeman.       239 

awoke  a  buried  era :  feudalism  in  all  its  aspects — its  airy  and 
gallant  chivalries,  its  simple  devotions,  its  conventual  dream- 
ings — with  its  Du  Guesclins,  its  good  Douglases,  its  kingly 
Abbot  Samsons,  its  troop  of  fair  ladies  riding  with  golden 
stirrups  to  the  crusade — has  passed  away  to  the  very  spirit  and 
essence,  and  Democracy  lays  its  iron  roads  across  its  grave. 
Many  generations  will  gaze  on  the  picture  of  the  whole  resusci* 
tated  life  of  the  thirteenth  century,  as  it  has  been  painted  in  a 
boldness  of  outline  and  incomparable  richness  of  color  which 
must  long  defy  the  rounding  finger  and  obscuring  breath  of 
time,  by  Mr.  Carlyle  ;  yet  Abbot  Samson  had  his  hand-gyves 
in  his  dungeon,  and  no  tongue  dared  to  move  in  his  presence. 
The  man  who  will  rule  men  in  an  era  of  freedom  must  dis- 
pense with  these ;  and  though  the  hero  of  Past  and  Present 
vv^as  assuredly  born  to  be  a  prince  and  ruler,  we  can  not  but 
believe  that  men  of  his  radical  type  are  still  extant  and  even 
common  in  England,  and  why  obstinately  close  our  eyes  to 
the  same  power  as  his,  when  exhibited  not  in  a  mediaeval  mon- 
astery, but  in  a  mercantile  establishment  of  a  working  era. 
Of  old,  you  might  have  obedience  of  serfs,  but  you  had  not 
freedom.  In  the  modern  time,  when  your  masters  are  incom- 
petent, you  have  a  pretended  though  ignoble  freedom  on  the 
part  of  servants,  and  no  true  obedience.  Where  you  have 
competent  masters  and  governed  servants,  both  are  free.  Is 
it  reasonable,  then,  and  manly,  to  whine  and  whimper  over 
our  modern  arrangements,  as  might  a  delicate-looking  Pusey- 
ite  curate,  or  to  sneer  at,  and  denounce,  and  turn  away  from 
them,  as  do  very  difTerent  .men,  instead  of  recognizing  it  as 
one  great  task  and  duty  of  our  age  to  reconcile  mastership 
with  freedom,  and  valiantly  setting  about  if?  That  Mr. 
Carlyle  has  written  on  these  matters  as  he  has  done,  may  well 
excite  surprise.  We  may  have  utterly  misconceived  the  whole 


240       budgett:   the  christian   freeman. 

purport  and  pliilosophy  of  his  history  of  the  French  Revolu 
tion,  despite  of  what  appears  to  us  perfect  clearness,  and  of 
what  we  know  to  have  been  enthusiastic  and  protracted  study  ; 
but  if  we  have  any  one  decided  idea  as  to  the  meaning  of  that 
book,  or  of  what  he  says  in  his  essay  on  Ebenezer  Elliott,  it  is, 
that  one  great  lesson  he  would  enforce  is,  that  the  feudal  no- 
bility must  either  vanish,  or  show  themselves  possessed  o^ per 
sonal  powers  to  win  the  respect  and  affectionate  obedience  ot 
men.  Yet  this  duke  appears  to  us  to  furnish  an  apposite  and 
express  illustration  of  such  words.  The  world  has  seen 
strange  things,  but  it  may  yet  be  worth  its  while  to  turn  aside 
and  contemplate  Mr.  Carlyle  in  the  capacity  of  apologist  for 
pithless  personages  still  fondly  called  noblemen. 

The  true  point  of  view  from  which  to  discern  the  essential 
type  and  distinguishing  characteristics  of  Budgett  is  the  mer- 
cantile ;  it  is  him  in  his  true  character  you  see,  when  you  mark 
his  intense  delight  as  he  moves  among  a  group  of  active 
working-men,  animating  them  by  his  presence,  directing  their 
movements,  and  thrilled  with  sympathy  for  honest  exertion. 
But  we  must  briefly  glance  at  the  other  phases  which  his 
character  displays  :  we  must  see  him  fairly  out  of  the  commer- 
cial atmosphere.  And  what  aspect  does  he  present  to  us  1 
He  comes  out  from  the  mine  where  he  has  been  toiling  so 
eagerly  with  the  gold  he  has  so  manfully  won.  Has  he  the 
greedy,  inhuman  look  of  the  miser,  the  small  frostbitten  eye 
of  the  niggard  1  He  has  worked  hard,  and  the  result  we  see 
in  money  :  the  "  beaverish"  talent  he  certainly  possesses 
Has  his  soul  become  beaverish  too  1  No.  He  has  still  the 
boy's  heart  which  throbbed  with  joy  when  he  flung  his  boyish 
earnings,  the  thirty  pounds  which  probably  appeared  to  him 
then  a  greater  sum  than  any  he  afterward  possessed,  into  his 
mother's  lap.     Over  the  deep  mine,  far  up  in  the  taintless 


budgett:   the    christian   freeman.       241 

azure,  his  eye  has  ever  caught  the  gleam  of  treasure  which 
might  well  purge  his  eyes  in  the  glare  of  earthly  gold.  To 
make  money  has  been  his  duty ;  he  could  not  work  to  the 
measure  of  his  abilities  without  that  result ;  but  to  give  is  his 
delight  and  his  reward.  With  the  same  tact  which  stood  him 
in  such  good  stead  among  his  workmen  and  customers,  he 
strikes  out  devices  of  good ;  with  his  native  energy  he 
carries  them  out.  His  positive  expenditure  in  philanthropic 
objects  is  fully  £2000  a-year.  His  mansion  becomes  a  center 
of  beneficent  light  for  the  whole  district,  in  every  direction  the 
broken  mists  of  ignorance  and  vice  retiring.  His  heart  is  as 
warm,  his  hand  as  open,  as  if  he  had  never  known  what  it  was 
to  make  a  shilling  ;  he  shows  himself  worthy  to  be  a  steward 
of  nature,  with  large  gifts  committed  for  disposal  to  his  hand ; 
he  scatters  bounty  where  his  agency  is  unseen  ;  he  ever  makes 
charity  the  handmaid  of  industry,  never  of  recklessness  or 
sloth  ;  the  blessed  influence  of  generosity,  tempered  by  justice 
and  governed  by  strong  intelligence,  is  felt  over  the  district. 

And  now  we  shall  look,  for  a  few  moments,  into  the  sanc- 
tuary of  his  home.  We  saw  him  take  his  early  love  to  be  his 
wife,  in  a  little  cottage  in  an  English  lane.  As  his  other  pro- 
jects have  prospered  in  his  hands,  his  cottage  has  gradually 
changed  its  appearance  ;  he  is  now  in  a  commodious  mansion, 
seated  in  the  midst  of  broad  pleasure-grounds,  and  command- 
ing a  wide  prospect  of  that  region  which  his  presence  has  lighted 
with  new  comfort  and  gladness.  In  his  family  circle  we  find 
him  displaying  the  same  traces  of  original  character  which  we 
have  marked  in  his  procedure  elsewhere.  His  children  are 
admitted  to  an  unwonted  intimacy  and  confidence.  "  They 
knew  his  business  affairs  intimately,  and  in  every  perplexing 
case  he  would  gather  them  round  him,  with  their  mother  and 
aunt,  and  take  their  advice.     His  standing  council  was  formed 

11 


242       BUDGE tt:   the   christian   freeman. 

of  the  v/hole  family,  even  at  an  age  when  other  fathers  woulu 
think  it  cruel  and  absurd  to  perplex  a  child  with  weighty  con- 
cerns." We  do  not  remember  to  have  ever  met  with  an  in- 
stance precisely  corresponding  to  this.  And  its  effects  are  all 
benign.  He  seems  to  have  attained  that  perfection  of  domes- 
tic rule,  where  kindness  is  so  governed  by  sagacity,  that  severity 
is  banished,  yet  every  good  effect  of  severity  won.  The  sym- 
pathy which  he  meets  among  his  w^orkmen,  and  which  lends 
an  aspect  of  noble  work  and  noble  governance  to  his  whole 
business  establishment,  pervades,  with  a  still  finer  and  more 
tender  warmth,  the  chambers  of  his  home ;  his  children  go 
hand-in-hand  with  him  in  his  plans  of  improvement,  the  will- 
ing instruments  in  all  his  philanthropic  devices.  And  he  feels 
that  he  has  their  sympathy  in  higher  things  than  these ;  we 
hear  him  expressing  the  conviction  that  they  are  all  going 
along  with  him  on  the  way  to  heaven.  This  is  the  final  touch 
of  joy  that  can  gild  a  Christian  home,  a  ray  of  heaven's  own 
glory  coming  to  blend  with,  to  hallow,  to  crown  the  blessings 
of  earth.  Be  it  a  delusion  or  not,  one  would  surely  wish  to 
"  keep  so  sweet  a  thing  alive :"  if  it  is  a  fond,  enthusiastic 
dream,  so  perfect  is  the  smile  of  happiness  on  the  dreaming 
face,  that  it  w^ere  surely  kind  to  let  the  sleeper  slumber  on. 
He  believes  that  all  his  family  will  again  gather  round  him 
on  the  plains  of  heaven :  that  the  flowers  which  now  shed 
fragrance  through  his  life  will  continue  to  bloom  beside  im- 
mortal amaranths ;  that  the  voices  which  are  now  the  music 
of  his  being  will  mingle  with  the  melodies  of  his  eternal  home ; 
that  the  light  of  those  smiles  which  greet  his  approach  to  his 
threshold,  and  which  now  make  summer  in  his  heart,  will 
blend  with  the  light  that  fadeth  never.  We  shall  not  say  that 
his  hopes  are  vain  :  his  children  are  his  friends,  and  friendship 
lives  in  the  spirit-land. 


budgett:   the    christian    freeman.       243 

Thus,  soft,  genial,  tenderly  kind,  do  wc  find  the  hard-trad- 
ing Budgctt,  when  we  contemplate  him  where  kindness  and 
tenderness  are  in  place ;  depend  upon  it,  were  he  not  a  right 
merchant  in  the  market,  he  would  not  be  so  gentle  in  the 
home  ;  it  is  only  the  strong  who  can  thus  wrap  the  paternal 
rod  in  flowers.  To  see  him  in  the  market,  one  would  say 
there  was  not  one  dew-drop  of  poetry  to  soften  the  ruggedness 
of  his  nature.  Follow  him  in  a  walk  on  his  own  grounds,  and 
you  are  apt  to  think  him  a  soft  sort  of  man,  with  somewhat  of 
a  sentimental  turn.  For  he  has  still  the  same  open  sense  for 
nature's  beauty  and  music  that  he  had  w^hen  he  heard  that  little 
bird's  morning  carol,  and  felt  in  his  young  heart  that  God  had 
answered  his  prayer  for  his  mother.  There  is  a  certain  dewi- 
ness, a  flowery  freshness,  over  his  character,  an  air  of  unex- 
hausted, unstrained  strength.  Three  things,  at  least,  nature 
has  united  in  him,  which  have  been  deemed  incompatible : 
thorough  working  faculty,  religion  of  the  sort  which  weeps  for 
sins  invisible  to  the  world,  and  poetical  sympathy.  You  may 
see  him  distancing  his  competitors  in  the  market,  until  they 
whisper  that  he  must  work  by  magic  ;  you  may  see  his  cheek 
wet  with  tears  as  he  prays  to  his  God  ;  you  may  hear  him,  in 
gleeful  tone,  quoting  verse  after  verse  of  poetry  in  his  fields, 
while  his  children  romp  around.  From  his  early  days,  too, 
the  strange  merchant  has  preached,  and  with  extraordmary 
power ;  his  connection  w^ith  the  Wesleyan  body  led  him  to 
this.  His  whole  character,  last  of  all,  is  vailed  in  humility  ; 
his  bearing  is  that  of  a  truly  modest,  self-knowing  man,  who 
can  act  with  perfect  self-reliance,  yet  take  advice,  if  such  may 
come,  from  a  child. 

At  the  age  of  fifty-four,  when  it  might  have  been  hoped  that 
many  years  of  life  w^ere  yet  before  him,  Budgett  gave  symp- 
toms of  a  fatal  malady.     Dropsy  and  heart-complaint  showed 


244       budgett:   the   christian   freeman. 

themselves,  and  his  strength  gradually  wore  away.  His  death- 
bed was  glorious  even  among  Christian  death-beds.  And 
though  w^e  would  ground  no  weighty  argument  upon  the  closing 
scenes  of  Cnristian  men,  we  can  not  regard  death-bed  experi- 
ence as  of  slight  importance.  Life  is  assuredly  more  import- 
ant than  death ;  on  it  would  we  fix  our  main  attention.  Yet  it 
is  mere  vacant  absurdity  to  deny  that  fear  casts  its  shade  over 
mankind  here  below,  as  they  look  forward  beyond  time ;  that 
it  is  really  the  king  of  terrors  whose  realm  is  the  grave,  and 
that  it  has  been  one  grand  aim  of  all  religions  to  discrown  the 
specter.  If,  moreover,  man  is  only  for  a  moment  a  denizen  of 
time,  if  he  is  yet  to  be  born  into  eternity,  and  his  life  here  is 
of  importance  only  in  its  relation  to  his  life  beyond,  it  mast 
ever  be  a  moment  of  supreme  interest  to  men,  when  the  im- 
mortal soul  is  preening  her  wings  for  an  infinite  ascent,  when 
earth  is  becoming  still,  and  voices  out  of  the  distance  seem  to 
reach  the  dying  ear,  and  a  strange  radiance  falls  across  the 
bourne  into  the  glazing  eye.  Budgett  found  his  simple  Chris- 
tian faith,  laying  hold  of  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  strong  enough 
to  palsy  the  arm  of  the  terror-crowned,  and  strike  from  it  its 
appalling  dart ;  nay,  he  found  that  simple  Christian  faith  of 
power  sufficient  to  steady  his  eye  in  gaze  upon  the  specter, 
until  his  terrors  flided  away,  and  he  became  an  angel  standing 
at  the  gates  of  light.  At  first  he  was  troubled  and  cast  down ; 
but  ere  long  the  victory  was  complete.  We  shall  simply  quote 
a  few  of  his  words,  leaving  readers  to  make  upon  them  their 
own  comments ;  to  judge  for  themselves,  whether  they  express 
a  selfish  joy,  or  that  of  one  whose  delight  was  in  holiness  and 
in  God ;  and  to  observe  the  childlike  humility  that  breathes 
beneath  their  rapture.  His  death  occurred  in  the  April  of 
1851 J  and  these  words  were  uttered  by  him  from  the  time  that 


budgett:   the   christian   freeman.       245 

his  illness  began  to  manifest  its  fatal  power :  they  sufficiently 
indicate  the  occasions  of  their  utterance : — 

"  I  sent  for  you  to  tell  you  how  happy  I  am ;  not  a  wave, 
not  a  ripple,  not  a  fear,  not  a  shadow  of  doubt.  I  didn't  think 
it  was  possible  for  man  to  enjoy  so  much  of  God  upon  earth. 
I'm  filled  with  God." 

"  I  like  to  hear  of  the  beauties  of  Heaven,  but  I  do  not  dwell 
upon  them ;  no,  what  I  rejoice  in  is,  that  Christ  will  be  there. 
Where  He  is,  there  shall  I  be  also.  I  know  that  He  is  in  me, 
and  I  in  Him.  I  shall  see  Him  as  He  is.  I  delight  in  know- 
ing that." 

"  How  our  Heavenly  Father  paves  our  way  down  to  the 
tomb !  I  seem  so  happy  and  comfortable,  it  seems  as  if  it 
can  not  be  for  me,  as  if  it  must  be  for  somebody  else.  I  don't 
deserve  it." 

"  I  have  sunk  into  the  arms  of  Omnipotent  Love." 

"  I  never  asked  for  joy,  I  always  thought  myself  unworthy 
of  it ;  but  He  has  given  me  more  than  I  asked." 

"  I  am  going  the  way  of  all  flesh ;  but,  bless  God,  I  'm  ready. 
I  trust  iL  the  merits  of  my  Redeemer.  I  care  not  when,  or 
where,  or  how ;  glory  be  to  God !" 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    SOCIAL   PROBLEM    OF   THE    AGE  ;     AND    ONE    OR   TWO   HINTS 
TOWARD    ITS    SOLUTION. 

That  there  is  in  our  time  some  great  difference  from  other 
ages,  that  some  ^Eonian  change  is  in  progress,  seems  hidden 
from  no  thinker  of  the  day.  De  Tocqueville  on  the  one  hand 
and  Carlyle  on  the  other  proclaim  the  fact.  This  process  of 
change  was  inaugurated  by  the  greatest  event  of  modern  times, 
in  itself,  indeed,  but  a  result,  the  first  French  Kevolution.  The 
doctrines  of  the  Encyclopsedia,  the  infidel  or  atheistic  theories 
of  Voltaire.  Diderot,  Naigeon,  and  their  followers,  had  gradu- 
ally pervaded  French  and  European  society,  eating  out  religion 
from  the  heart  of  nations.  Kings  and  nobles  trembled  not. 
This  new  philosophy  of  materialism  and  sensuality  seemed  to 
them  but  a  summer  cloud,  touched  with  the  roseate  hues  of 
genius,  and  distilling  a  gentle  rain,  to  nourish  the  flowers  of 
sentiment  and  foster  the  growths  of  science ;  if  there  did  issue 
from  it  a  few  gleams  of  distant  lightning,  these  would  but  clear 
the  air  from  ennui,  and  promote  a  freer  respiration.  The  an- 
cient sentence,  "  Fear  God,  and  honor  the  king,"  had,  it  was 
agreed,  held  sway  long  enough  over  the  minds  of  men;  the 
principalities  and  powers  of  the  earth  were  perfectly  satisfied, 
and  sat  smiling  in  the  secure  content  of  dotard  imbecility,  while 
the  Encyclopaedic  lightning  burned  out  from  its  place  among 
the  beliefs  and  maxims  of  men,  the  former  half  of  the  regu 


THE    SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE.  247 

lating  sentence;  Let  there  be  no  God,  they  said,  but  oh,  con- 
tinue to  honor  ^3.  At  last  the  storm  came,  in  a  burst  that 
shook  the  globe.  The  world  stood  still  to  listen ;  even  the 
lone  and  discrowned  Jerusalem,  sitting  amid  her  graves,  be- 
came more  desolate,  for  pilgrims  forgot  to  turn  their  steps  to 
the  East.  We  know  the  result.  We  have  marked  the  path 
of  that  lightning  which  burned  the  old  French  monarchy  from 
the  face  of  the  earth,  and  in  whose  blasting  gleam  the  brilliance 
of  e^ery  crown  in  the  world  waxed  pale.  That  wild  glare 
awoke  a  power  that  had  long  slumbered : — The  people.  Leav- 
ing Encyclopsedism  behind,  and  lifting  its  voice  in  other  na- 
tions besides  France,  this  great  new  element  in  social  affairs — 
in  its  awakening,  its  attempt  to  make  itself  heard,  its  slow 
gravitation  toward  its  own  place  in  the  system  of  things — has 
given  its  distinctive  features  to  our  epoch. 

To  deny  the  fact,  that  the  relations  of  classes  and  the  modes 
of  social  action  wear  at  present  among  free  nations  an  aspect 
unknown  in  the  feudal  ages,  is  now  impossible.  It  is  simply 
out  of  the  power  of  any  man  to  turn  the  eye  of  his  imagina- 
tion upon  the  mediaeval  time ;  to  note  the  tranquillity  of  its 
general  atmosphere,  breathing  in  dim  religious  light  through 
the  still  cathedral  aisle,  and  resting  round  the  hoary  turret  of 
the  feudal  castle ;  to  mark  how  reverently  the  serf  looks  up  to 
his  master,  and  with  what  undoubting  devotion  the  worshiper 
kneels  before  the  uplifted  crucfix  ;  to  observe  the  Book  un- 
chained from  its  place  at  the  altar,  and  the  venerating  wonder 
with  which  men  gaze  upon  him  who  can  read  ;  to  see  one  large 
class  sitting  aloft,  glittering  in  its  badges,  in  its  one  hand  feudal 
charters,  in  its  other  a  feudal  sword,  on  its  lip  a  really  noble 
and  beautiful  smile  of  chivalrous  valor  and  youthful  strength, 
on  his  brow  all  the  intelligence  of  the  age,  and  another  large 
class  below,  born  :o  bow  down  before  this,  to  receive  food  from 


248  THE     SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE. 

its  hands  and  instruction  from  its  lips,  and  yield  it  in  return 
the  instinctive  affection  of  children  and  the  childlike  obedience 
of  men  not  born  to  the  heritage  of  a  will ;  and  then  to  main- 
tain that  the  whole  order  of  society  has  not  undergone  a  uni- 
versal and  upturning  alteration.  So  thorough,  so  transforming 
is  the  change  from  this  era,  that  a  single  glance  at  the  picture 
is  sufficient  to  convince  any  intelligent,  informed,  and  healthy- 
minded  man  that  it  is  gone  forever.  The  individual  or  party 
who  proposes  any  attempt  toward  its  recall  is  not  to  be  list- 
ened to  :  we  do  not  take  up  the  view  of  the  present  time,  gen- 
erally understood  as  that  of  Puseyism :  we  foreclose  all  plead- 
ing on  that  side  of  the  question,  by  the  simple  observation, 
that  we  can  regard  neither  with  hope  nor  apprehension  what 
were  an  absolute  anomaly  in  this  world,  an  unrolling  of  the 
scroll  of  history  after  it  has  been  once  folded  up. 

But  there  has  taken  place  a  much  later  change  than  that  we 
here  indicate.  It  is,  we  think,  only  in  what  may  be  called  late 
years  that  the  ultimate  influences  of  the  mighty  agency  intro- 
duced by  John  Faust  into  civilization  have  begun  to  become 
traceable.  It  is  only  in  these  times  that  its  unpredicted  power 
to  loosen  the  tongue  of  the  world,  to  draw  forth  the  electricity 
of  thought,  to  turn  the  pen  to  a  scepter,  and  the  hereditary 
diadem  to  a  toy,  has  been  fairly  evinced.  It  is  the  grand  char- 
acteristic of  our  age  that  thought  is  more  fluent,  that  men 
more  easily  communicate  together,  than  heretofore ;  the  uni- 
versity of  the  modern  era  can  be  closed  to  none,  for  who  is  it 
that  can  not  learn  to  read  or  write,  and  who  that  can  read,  and 
has  the  power  of  using  his  fingers,  may  not  act  upon  his  fel- 
lows ?  We  see  around  us  the  rending  of  ancient  associations, 
the  awakening  of  novel  powers  ;  we  witness  discordance,  sever- 
ance, doubt;  the  ancient  reverences  and  the  ancient  unities 
have  mostly  passed  away  ;  men  believe  not,  without  uttering  a 


THE  BOOIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     249 

determined  Why  1  men  respect  not,  without  a  mandate  in  na. 
turc's  handwriting.  To  us,  none  of  those  things  arc  amazing, 
for  we  see  them  to  be  the  natural  and  inevitable  birth  of  free- 
dom and  knowledge  :  the  problem  they  present  we  will  accept 
and  endeavor  to  solve. 

We  ^  cnture  to  enunciate  what  we  believe  the  precise  mean- 
ing, cause,  and  tendency,  when  philosophically  weighed,  of  all 
'hese  great  phenomena.  We  find  these  by  consideration  of 
1  profound  apothegm  of  Goethe's,  spoken  with  reference  to  the 
individual  mind  : — "  Thought  widens,  but  lames  ;  action  nar- 
rows, but  animates."  It  is  well  known  how  the  man  of  one 
idea  can  work  ;  it  is  well  known,  too,  that  in  order  to  do  any 
single  work  well,  you  must  on  it  concentrate  your  efforts. 
We  have  no  hesitation  whatever,  and  since  we  can  not  here 
demonstrate  the  jDropriety  of  our  proceeding,  we  must  request 
readers  to  assure  themselves  by  reflection  and  investigation 
that  we  are  right,  in  applying  this  individual  law  to  the  nation. 
The  army  of  Islam  was  victorious,  because  it  poured  the  light- 
ning of  its  defiance  on  the  foe  as  from  one  blazing  eye.  Na- 
tions rolled  away  resistlessly  to  the  Crusade,  because  their 
mighty  hearts  throbbed  with  the  one  idea  of  saving  the  sepul- 
cher  of  the  Saviour  from  the  desecration  of  unbelievers.  If 
you  look  well  into  the  ancient  time,  you  will  find  the  unity  of 
action  on  the  part  of  vassals  accounted  for  by  the  consideration 
that  they  had  not  a  sufficient  power  of  thought  to  doubt ;  the 
iron  energy  of  governments,  by  the  fact  that  there  had  not  yet 
dawned  on  the  world  the  idea  of  toleration,  and  that  they  were 
lamed  by  no  freedom  or  variety  of  opinion.  There  are,  how- 
ever, in  the  individual  life,  stages  which  are  peculiarly  those  of 
doubt.  The  youth  acts  cheerfidly  and  with  energy,  on  the 
belief  he  has  received  from  his  fathers :  then  he  begins  to  ques- 
tion, to  hesitate,  to  doubt :  his  arm  is  at  once  paralyzed,  and 
11* 


250  THE    SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE. 

with  many  words  his  actions  become  few  and  undecisive. 
But  he  may  advance  to  yet  a  higher  state :  this  doubt  and 
temporary  indecision  may  be  a  stage  in  his  progress  to  calm 
intelligent  manhood;  he  may  regain  his  early  cheerful  and 
united  energy,  with  his  beliefs  his  own,  and  the  still  sky  of 
manhood  over  him.  With  Britain,  as  a  nation,  we  can  not 
but  think  that  it  at  present  is  as  with  the  doubting,  examining, 
questioning  man.  With  the  old  relations  of  force,  we  have 
lost  much  of  the  old  power  of  action ;  pretension  and  quack- 
ery flourish  amain.  Mr.  Carlyle  tells  us  that  all  things  have 
unfixed  themselves,  and  float  distractedly  in  an  ocean  of  talk. 
It  is  useless,  and  it  is  contrary  to  truth  to  say,  that  his  denun- 
ciations are  altogether  uncalled  for,  that  the  peril  he  descries  is 
not  real.  Let  any  one  look  into  the  state  of  our  law,  and  the  slow 
success  of  efforts  making  for  its  amendment ;  let  him  examine 
the  condition  of  our  trusts,  enough,  as  on  good  authority  appears, 
of  itself  to  give  work,  long  and  difficult,  to  Eeform,  had  it  the 
hands  of  Briareus  ;  let  him  consider  the  ease  with  which  public 
nuisance  can  shelter  itself  under  so-called  private  right,  and  the 
clumsy  and  inefficient  machinery  by  which  any  change,  demand- 
ed it  may  be  by  the  very  health  of  our  towns,  can  be  effected ; 
let  him  reflect  on  the  power  of  corporations  to  clog  the  wheels 
of  general  progress,  and  the  seeming  powerlessness  of  Britain 
to  teach  her  own  children ;  then,  or  rather  when  he  has  added 
fi'om  all  hands  to  this  partial  list  of  our  shortcomings,  let  him 
decide  whether  an  infuvsion  of  energy  into  the  internal  economy 
of  our  country  is  not  urgently  demanded.  Nay,  if  this  does 
not  satisfy  him,  let  him  pace  the  Continent  of  Europe,  and  see 
despotism  teaching  all  her  children,  cleaning,  and  beautifying, 
and  ordering  her  streets,  offering  countless  suggestions  of 
order,  cheapness,  decorum,  common  sense,  to  a  British  observ- 
er, and  then  let  him  answer. 


THE     SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE.  251 

*'  When,"  exclaims  Mr.  Carlyle,  "  shall  we  have  done  with 
all  this  of  British  liberty,  voluntary  principle,  clangers  of  cen- 
tralization, and  the  like  ?  It  is  really  getting  too  bad.  For 
British  liberty,  it  seems,  the  people  can  not  be  taught  to  read. 
British  liberty,  shuddering  to  interfere  with  the  rights  of  capi- 
tal, takes  six  or  eight  millions  of  money  annually  to  feed  the 
idle  laborer  whom  it  dare  not  employ.  For  British  liberty 
we  live  over  poisonous  cess-pools,  gully-drains,  and  detestable 
abominations  ;  and  omnipotent  London  can  not  sweep  the  dirt 
out  of  itself.  British  liberty  produces — what  ?  Floods  of 
Hansard  debates  every  year,  and  apparently  little  else  at  pres- 
ent. If  these  are  the  results  of  British  liberty,  I,  for  one, 
move  we  should  lay  it  on  the  shelf  a  little,  and  look  out  for 
something  other  and  further.  We  have  achieved  British 
liberty  hundreds  of  years  ago ;  and  are  fast  growing,  on 
the  strength  of  it,  one  of  the  most  absurd  populations  the 
sun,  among  his  great  Museum  of  Absurdities,  looks  down  upon 
at  present. " 

Now  we  desire  specially  to  have  it  observed  here,  that  we 
consider  it  necessary  for  no  one,  in  order  to  comprehend  and 
intelligently  judge  of  the  few  observations  we  have  to  offer  in 
the  succeeding  paragraphs,  to  agree  fully  in  all  the  preceding 
remarks :  let  it  not  even  be  thought  that  we  pronounce  the 
state  of  Britain  decadent :  it  will  not  be  denied  that,  if  more 
energy  could,  in  perfect  combination  with  freedom,  be  intro- 
duced into  the  practical  working,  external  and  internal,  of  our 
lation,  and  of  free  nations  in  general,  it  were  well.  We  cer- 
tainly attach  importance  to  what  we  have  said,  and  we  have 
not  only  Mr.  Carlyle  on  our  side,  but  all  those  thinkers,  among 
whom  are  to  be  ranged  Fichte  and  Richter,  who  designate  this 
a  transition  era ;  yet  we  demand  nothing  more  of  the  reader, 
than  tha";  he  call  to  mind  the  commonplace  about  the  in- 


252  THE     SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE. 

efficiency  t  f  freedom  as  compared  with  despotism,  and  yield 
us  a  hearing  while  we  ofFer  one  or  two  suggestions  toward  the 
practical  solution  of  what  we  must  believe  to  be  the  great 
problem  before  the  free  nations  at  present,  The  combination 
of  modern  freedom,  thought,  and  enlightenment,  with  the 
strength  ard  activity  of  despotism. 

Omitting  the  consideration  of  certain  views  of  less  import 
ance,  we  deem  it  right  to  notice  two  solutions  of  our  problem 
proposed,  either  explicitly  or  implicitly,  by  classes  of  thinkers 
who  recognize  the  necessity  of  reaching  a  solution.  With  each 
party,  we  have  one  important  point  of  argument :  from  each 
we  differ  in  matters  of  vital  moment. 

The  first  solution  is  that  wdiich,  however  modified,  had  its 
source  in  the  montanism  of  the  first  French  Revolution,  and 
has  ever  continued  in  essential  particulars  to  agree  with  it ; 
that  of  liberal,  or,  more  strictly,  infidel  radicalism.  The  one 
thing  which  we  accept  from  the  French  Eevolution,  and  from 
the  party  w^hose  view  w^e  now  consider,  is  their  testimony  to 
human  freedom.  We  will  recognize  a  sublimity  in  the  attempt 
of  the  French  nation  to  be  free  and  self  governing ;  we  will 
allow  it  was  an  apple  of  celestial  hue  and  fragrance  France 
stretched  out  her  hand  to  pluck  ;  and  if  she  found  it  but  bitter 
and  bloody  dust,  we  shall  not  the  less  believe  that  it  proved 
such,  only  because  the  hand  with  which  she  grasped  it  was 
that  of  a  blaspheming  demon.  The  sun  looked  down  on 
strange  sights  in  that  Revolution  tumult ;  on  sights  whose  sig- 
nificance can  never  be  exhausted,  and  in  which  the  eyes  of  na- 
tions will  in  all  time  have  deep  lessons  to  read.  It  looked 
down  on  a  people  that  turned  its  gaze  on  the  past,  and  saw 
generation  after  generation  trooping  dimly  down  the  vista  of 
years  from  the  cavern  of  vacant  Chance,  which  had  the  heart 
to  cast  its  eye  on  the  future,  and  see  all  men  sinking  from  the 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     253 

verge  of  the  world  into  the  blank  abyss  of  annihilation,  and 
which,  even  in  the  ghastly  loneliness  of  such  a  universe  as  this, 
standing  for  one  cheerless  moment  between  two  vast  and  eter- 
nal graven,  could  contrive  to  be  riotous  and  gay.  It  looked 
down  on  a  cathedral  where  men  were  gTimacing  in  idiot 
laughter  rouud  what  they  called  the  goddess  of  reason.  It 
looked  down  on  a  Convention  where  they  were  "  decreeing"  the 
existence  of  the  Supreme  Being ;  the  existence  of  Him,  to 
whom  the  whole  universe  is  a  film  of  breath  on  the  morning 
air.  Perhaps  more  wonderful  still,  it  looked  down  upon  a  na- 
tion  having,  with  all  this,  the  name  of  freedom  on  its  lips,  and 
uttering  w^ords  which  sounded  like  those  of  heroic  patriots  and 
poets,  asserting  the  equality  of  man,  and  declaring  that  it 
would  rule  itself.  But  it  had  been  most  wonderful  of  all,  if  it 
had  seen  these  words  made  good,  if  a  people  denying  its  im- 
mortality and  believing  the  universe  to  have  no  moral  Sun, 
knit  by  no  sacred  memories  to  the  past  and  owning  no  treas- 
ure of  hope  in  the  future,  its  spirit  stubborned  by  none  of  the 
iron  of  duty  and  its  appetites  calling  aloud  for  pleasure,  had 
been  able  to  become  free.  This  it  did  not  behold.  That  na- 
tion first  mocked  freedom  by  the  mummeries  of  children,  and 
then  made  its  name  a  loathing  over  the  world  by  the  horror 
of  bloody  cruelty.  Federation  fetes,  statues  of  liberty,  endless 
outflowing  of  meaningless  mellifluous  oratory,  and  then  foam- 
ino-  hatred,  and  the  long  line  of  death  tumbrils ;  the  dream 
that  freedom  was  no-government,  and  the  awakening  to  find 
that  it  was  the  government  of  madness ; — such  was  the  history 
of  the  French  Revolution.  If  we  accept  even  from  it  the  im- 
perishable truth  that  freedom  is  the  inalienable  inheritance  and 
ultimate  goal  of  man,  we  will  also  read  in  it  this  other  lesson, 
that  without  religion  a  nation  can  never  be  free,  but  will  either 
go  mumming  and  fooling  to  plant  liberty-trees  and  inaugurate 


254     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

plaster- of-Paris  images,  or  will  awaken  the  Furies  of  anarchy, 
and  join  with  them  in  a  dance  of  death.  Never  did  revolu- 
tion so  completely  fail  as  that  of  France ;  and  never  in  this 
world  was  there  a  revolution  so  profoundly  infidel.  Its  source 
was  the  infidelity  of  Voltaire ;  the  philosophers  wdio  supported 
it  were,  as  a  body,  infidel ;  and  its  poet  Shelley,  while  believ- 
ing in  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  refused  to  bow  the  knee  to 
the  Christian  God.  Soft,  and  glowing,  and  streaming  from 
the  very  heart,  that  music  of  Shelley's,  one  might  almost  deem, 
would  have  charmed  the  maniac  fury  from  godless  freedom, 
and  bent  the  minds  of  men  to  truth's  own  sway ;  that  temple 
which  he  reared  to  the  sound  of  dulcet  melody,  and  over  which 
rested  the  glories  of  one  of  the  princeliest  imaginations  that  ever 
sublimed  enthusiasm  or  personified  thought,  would,  one  might 
think,  have  drawn  the  nations  to  the  worship  of  a  calm  and  be- 
nign freedom,  whose  every  word  was  wisdom  and  all  whose 
looks  were  love ;  but  it  was  not  so  :  the  entrancing  poetry  of 
Shelley  seems  to  us  like  an  ^Eolian  harp,  hung  out  in  the  tempest 
of  modern  democracy,  whose  soft  tremblings,  whose  plaintive 
persuasive  murmurings,  will  never  attune  to  harmony  that 
hoarse  and  wintery  blast.  To  another  music  than  that  must  the 
nation  march  that  will  be  free  ;  to  no  such  gentle  melody  did 
the  legions  of  the  Republic  march  to  meet  Pyrrhus,  the  Ten 
Thousand  to  the  field  of  Marathon ;  other  and  inferior  gifts 
God  may  grant  to  nations  that  have  utterly  forgotten  Him, 
but  it  would  seem  that  the  crowning  gift  of  freedom  will  be 
granted  only  to  one  in  whose  heart  there  is  the  belief  in  a  God, 
and  which  can  reverence  an  oath.  Nor  is  it  diflicult  to  discern 
the  reason  why  :  whatever  may  appear  in  the  philosophic  dia- 
gram, there  are  passions  sleeping  in  the  human  breast  that,  in 
the  open  sea  of  actual  life,  will  always  awake,  and  overwhelm 
the  vessel  of  freedom,  if  they  are  not  quelled  by  one  Eye.    For 


THE     SOCIAL     PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE.  255 

this  reason,  we  turn  away  from  infidel  radicalism  ;  it  aims  at 
an  impossiljility,  it  contradicts  human  history. 

From  irreligious  radicalism,  which  must  end  either  in  folly 
or  in  anarchy,  we  turn  to  Mr.  Carlyle.  We  think  that  an 
earnest  student  of  his  works  can  discover  in  them  a  solution  of 
our  problem,  though  not  one  which  can  be  pronounced  hopeful 
or  flattering.  We  have  already  defined  what  we  believe  to  be 
the  theory  of  government  which  is  philosophically  deducible 
from  pantheism,  and  which,  whether  deliberately,  consciously, 
and  avowedly  deduced  or  not,  shapes  itself  naturally  out  in 
the  mind  of  a  thinker  whose  general  mode  of  viewing  human 
aflTairs  is  pantheistic.  It  will  be  no  small  confirmation  of  our 
statement,  if  we  find  that  it  coincides  with  actual  circumstances 
in  the  case  of  one,  whose  writings,  however  wrathful  and  tor- 
rent-like, flow  from  a  fountain  of  love,  and  who,  in  the  prime 
of  his  gigantic  energies,  turned  away  from  the  pleasant  places 
of  literature,  and  the  calm  inviting  fields  of  abstract  specula- 
tion, to  concentrate  his  powers  upon  practical  life,  and  the  an- 
swering of  the  great  social  questions  of  the  day,  but  the  whole 
tenor  of  whose  thinking  is  pantheistic.  Now,  though  we  find 
in  Mr.  Carlyle's  latest  writings  what  seems  to  exjDOse  him  to 
the  objection  of  looking  somewhat  too  fixedly  on  the  past ; 
and  although  we  can  not  think  it  impossible  that  our  time  and 
land  might  have  furnished  him  with  scenes  and  with  men,  as 
well  fitted  to  enforce  dramatically  certain  of  those  lessons, 
sumless  we  allow  in  their  value,  which  he  has  read  us  in  his 
Past  and  Present,  as  St.  Edmundsbury  and  Abbot  Samson ; 
yet  w^e  think  it  is  but  a  superficial  view  of  his.  whole  works 
which  does  not  unvail  a  deeper  truth  behind  all  his  applause  of 
the  past,  and  prove  that  his  eye  is  on  the  future.  His  mighty 
intellect  and  iron  will  are  drawn,  as  by  the  sympathy  of  broth- 
erhood, toward  the  giant  forces  of  the  olden  time  ;  he  invaria- 


256     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

blj  speaks  of  the  present  age  as  feeble  and  distracted,  when 
contrasted  with  aares  long  gone  by  ;  and  in  the  work  we  have 
named,  he  has,  by  the  wizard  power  of  his  genius,  summoned 
up,  in  living  distinctness,  certain  great  spectacles  and  men  of 
the  past,  that  those  of  the  present  may  hide  their  heads  before 
them.  Yet  who  has  proclaimed  wuth  such  emphasis  as  he,  that 
the  law  of  all  human  things  is  progress,  that  it  is  vain  to  at- 
tempt to  chain  the  future  under  the  past  ?  We  can  not  doubt 
that  it  is  not  his  desire  or  hope  that  the  nineteenth  or  twen- 
tieth century  should  become  the  thirteenth,  but  only  that  cer- 
tain fundamental  characteristics  should  be  found  in  both.  It  is 
our  anxious  wish  fairly  to  represent  the  essential  aspect  of  that 
new  time,  which,  though  removed  by  centuries,  he  still  confi- 
dently predicts,  and  which  is  to  be,  not  the  past,  but  the  life 
and  truth  of  the  past,  transformed  by  the  spirit  and  trans- 
figured by  the  light  of  the  present. 

We  conceive  Mr.  Carlyle,  looking  forward  into  the  distance, 
to  contemplate  a  time  characterized  as  follows  :  the  rubbish  of 
extinct  customs  has  been  swept  aside,  the  dust  of  shattered 
systems  has  fallen  from  the  air  and  sunk  harmless  into  the  soil, 
the  discords  of  quackery  and  disputation  have  gone  silent,  and, 
alas !  the  world-tree  of  the  nations,  planted  of  old  in  Judea, 
the  Igdrasil  of  modern  civilization,  that  bloomed  into  its  chiv- 
alries, and  yielded  fair  flowerage  of  literatures  and  philosophies, 
and  bore  its  final  fruit  in  the  Lutheran  Reformation,  has  fallen 
utterly,  and  moldered  as  into  moorland  moss ;  the  deep  eter- 
nal skies  of  nature,  the  great  laws  of  duty,  of  industry,  and 
of  hero-worship,  have  then  again  emerged,  and  roofed  the 
world.  We  can  not  err  in  believing,  that  more  and  more  the 
development  of  his  system  has  tended  to  the  pouring  of  con- 
tempt upon  all  the  modes  and  agencies  of  our  present  social  life : 
tha-i  he  has  scowled  upon  popular  assemblies,  upon  free  election, 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     257 

upon  all  forms  of  public  opinion,  upon  what  is  partly  the  voice 
and  partly  the  guide  of  public  opinion,  the  free  press:  that 
more  and  more  clearly  his  all-embracing  word — of  command, 
of  denunciation,  of  prophecy — has  been  hero-worship ;  and 
that,  with  more  and  more  distinctness  and  decision,  he  has 
poin  :ed  at  the  severance  of  all  men  into  two  great  classes,  the 
foolish  and  the  wise,  the  silently  and  blindly-governed  and  the 
silently  and  irresponsibly-governing.  He  has  declared  his  utter 
abandonment  of  faith  in  the  popular  understanding,  by  pro- 
posing a  step  of  manifest  return,  in  the  appointment  of  certain 
senators  or  privy-councilors  by  nomination.  One  of  his  late 
works  contain  an  assertion,  which,  with  absolute  explicitness, 
declares  liim  the  eternal  foe  of  freedom,  which  prescribes  to  it, 
in  conferring  or  debating  with  him,  but  one  tone,  and  that  the 
tone  which  can  so  well  be  borrowed  from  his  own  works,  of 
implacable  defiance,  namely,  and  irreconcilability ;  which  is 
probably  the  keenest  and  most  bitter  insult  that  was  ever  sent 
to  the  rude  heart  of  the  human  race,  ever  leveled  against  that 
great  class  which  has  made  up,  and  which  for  an  indefinite 
number  of  centuries  must  continue  to  make  up,  the  bulk  of 
mankind,  and  if  not  a  preponderating,  at  least  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  public  voice  of  every  free  country ;  the  sad  and 
amazing  declaration,  that  "  by  any  ballot-box  Judas  will  go  as 
far  as  Jesus."  He  has  sneered  at  the  advantages  of  liberty 
and  palliated  the  evils  of  despotism,  pointing  to  Epictetus  and 
to  Paul  as  showing  the  independence  of  the  individual  charac 
ter  to  any  such  influence.  In  a  word,  no  one  can  question  the 
fact,  that  Mr.  Carlyle  has  drawn  off  altogether  from  the  side 
of  what  is  meant  by  radicalism ;  that  his  political  philosophy, 
while  exterminating  enough,  has  disjoined  itself  from  the  pop- 
ular enlightenment,  the  popular  science,  the  popular  election, 
which  cluste '  round  that  standard.     What,  then,  does  he  pro- 


258  THE    SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE    AGE. 

pose,  Dr  prophetically  proclaim  ?  What,  we  ask,  are  we  to 
find  in  liis  unceasing  laudation  of  "might,"  in  the  analogies 
upon  which  he  ventures,  surely  with  a  strange  boldness,  be- 
tween men  and  lower  animals  1  What  in  that  circumstance 
which  we  deem  of  a  profound  interest  and  significance,  his 
known  admiration  of  Frederic  the  Great,  who  illustrates  to 
us,  with  perfect  and  precise  appropriateness,  the  ultimate  de- 
velopment of  a  pantheistic  theory  of  human  government,  of 
whom,  w^hatever  is  doubtful,  this  may  be  considered  sure,  that 
the  virtual  declaration  of  his  reign  to  his  subjects  was,  All  you 
can  demand  of  me  is,  that  I  govern  well,  if  you  are  happy,  it 
is  of  no  importance  whether  your  happiness  is  that  of  freemen 
or  slaves  ?  The  sum-total  and  ultimate  goal  of  Mr.  Carlyle's 
political  thinking,  we  must  conclude,  has  turned  out  to  be  what 
we  showed  was  naturally  and  philosophically  to  be  expected— 
Despotism.  He  will  not  attempt  to  marry  freedom  to  strength, 
nor  cherish  the  hope  that  the  race  may  pass  from  the  unintel- 
ligent energy  of  youth,  when  force  followed  authority,  and 
thought  had  not  lamed  action,  to  the  free  energy  of  manhood ; 
the  multitude  are  hopelessly  foolish,  and  their  highest  bliss 
must  be  found,  in  bowing,  with  instinctive  reverence,  before  an 
absolute  sovereign,  their  eyes  blinded  by  the  glare  of  his  sole 
and  God-like  will.  All  the  inventions,  all  the  sciences,  all  the 
enlightenment  of  modern  times,  may  then  be  brought  to  clothe 
and  feed  them,  as  his  ability  renders  possible,  and  as  his  bounty 
chooses  to  dispense ;  only  they  must  obey  with  no  question  as 
to  the  reason.  This  result  does  not  anywise  induce  us  to  re- 
tract or  modify  what  we  have  said  of  the  deep  patriotism  and 
love  lying  in  the  heart  of  Mr.  Carlyle ;  but  no  less  assured  are 
we  that  this  is  the  only  logical  deduction  from  his  original  ax- 
ioms, and  the  sole  inference  that  can  be  drawn  from  the  whole 
series  of  his  works.     Ancient  and  modern  times  may,  accord- 


THE     SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE.  259 

ing  to  him,  differ  in  many  things,  but  in  one  thing  they  must 
agree,  that  the  highest  political  attainment  of  mankind  is  sub- 
jection to  a  wise  and  heroic  but  absolute  will. 

Surely  there  is  something  sad  and  disappointing  in  this  pros- 
pect opened  up  by  ]\Ir.  Carlyle  for  the  future.  Has  all  that 
ancient  and  heroic  struggling  after  freedom,  then,  been  but  the 
fruit  of  delusion  and  frenzy  ?  Or  was  our  race  destined  to 
expend  all  its  heroism  in  a  long,  weary  battle,  and  when  at  last 
it  saw  its  enemy  dead,  when  at  last  it  did  behold  Despotism 
in  the  swoon  o-f  death,  with  its  cruel  and  bloodshot  eyeball  at 
length  glazing  and  becoming  all  lightless  and  ghastly,  to  find 
it  had  toiled  and  bled  for  a  mere  bauble,  and  that  its  only  hope 
was  to  resuscitate  the  conquered  monster  ?  Has  the  path  of 
humanity,  over  sandy  deserts  and  up  flinty  mountains,  through 
burning  heats  and  bitter  storms,  been  to  such  a  promised  land 
as  this  1  A  promised  land  !  We  will  not  accept  it,  if  its  vines 
were  richer  than  those  of  Eschol,  and  it  flowed  with  milk  and 
honey.  Decided  as  is  our  difference  with  the  radicals  of  the 
French  Eevolution,  we  have  a  deeper  debate  with  Mr.  Carlyle. 
From  whatever  quarter  it  is  that  we  hear  the  note  of  disaffec- 
tion to  freedom,  we  will  not  consent  to  hear  it.  We  believe 
there  is  a  strength  of  nobleness  in  the  human  heart  to  scorn 
such  prosperity  as  even  perfect  despotism  could  bestow ;  for 
no  humiliating  happiness  will  it  sell  its  birthright  of  freedom  ; 
men  will  rather  be  freemen,  ay,  and  die  for  freedom,  in  fj 
rocky  gorge  of  Hellas,  or  on  bare  moors  in  Scotland,  than 
slaves  amid  the  vines  of  Campania,  or  on  the  fragrant  banks 
of  Ganges. 

"K"or  happiness,  nor  majesty,  nor  fame, 
Nor  peace,  nor  strergth,  nor  skill  in  arms  or  arts, 
Shepherd  those  herds  whom  tyranny  makes  tame  ; 
Verse  echoes  not  one  beating  of  their  hearts — 


260     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

History  is  but  the  shadow  of  their  shame — 
Art  vails  her  glass,  or  from  the  pageant  starts, 
As  to  oblivion  their  blind  millions  fleet, 
Staining  that  heaven  with  obscene  imagery 
Of  their  own  likeness." 

We  think  that  one  great  temptation  of  the  age  is  to  distrust 
and  abandon  Freedom.  Her  robe  has  been  soiled  with  blood, 
her  eye  has  been  lit  with  frenzy,  "  blasphemy's  loud  scream" 
has  mingled  with  her  "  music  of  deliverance  ;"  but  she  is,  for 
all  this,  an  angel  of  light,  and  we  must  not  forego  the  faith  and 
hope  that  her  features  will  yet  beam  forth  in  their  own  im- 
mortal loveliness.  We  shall  not  lift  the  light  from  human 
annals,  and  silence  the  songs  which  have  risen  from  earth's 
fairest  homes  and  noblest  battle-fields  ;  that  thrill  which  the 
word  freedom  has  ever  sent  through  the  heart  of  nations,  has 
not  been  altogether  meaningless.  Upon  any  correct  theory  of 
man,  the  essential  excellence  of  freedom  is  demonstrable  ;  not, 
certainly,  as  a  present  possession,  but  as  a  future  attainment : 
it  must  be  the  aim  of  civilization  to  educe  every  faculty  of 
the  whole  man,  spiritual  as  well  as  physical,  and  this  can  never 
be  done  until  man,  as  a  civis,  as  one  united  indissolubly  with 
his  fellows,  thinks  and  wills,  as  well  as  works  and  feeds.  At 
what  period  a  nation  may  come  to  be  capable  of  freedom,  it 
were  long  to  tell ;  but  this  we  may  say  with  unfaltering  lip, 
that  the  nation  which  has  had  freedom  won  for  it  by  the  wis- 
dom and  dauntlessness  of  its  sons,  covers  itself  with  everlast- 
ing infamy  if  it  can  not  enter  on  the  possession  of  its  inheritance 
To  accept  Mr.  Carlyle's  view  of  the  future,  were  to  confess 
ourselves  nationally  worthy  of  this  contempt ;  and  if  we  put 
"  British  freedom  on  the  shelf,"  our  heroic  fathers  that  have 
bled  for  us  from  Bannockburn  to  Sedgemoor,  will,  from  their 
high  thrones,  look  down  upon  us  with  indignation  and  shame. 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     2G1 

Wc  shall  hope  there  may  be  found  some  other  solution  of 
our  problem  than  any  we  have  glanced  at.  But  first  it  may 
be  well  to  ask,  whether  it  is  to  be  considered  easy.  "  The  dis- 
cipline of  slavery  is  unknown  among  us."  Is  there,  then,  to 
be  no  discipline  ?  Does  human  freedom  mean  the  dissolution 
of  government  ?  Are  the  shouts  of  nations  at  the  name  and 
prospect  of  liberty  to  be  understood  as  indicating  that  freedom 
IS  easy,  that  it  consists  in  every  man's  doing  as  he  likes,  that, 
when  a  nation  has  hurled  tyranny  aside,  it  has  now  only  to 
gesticulate  round  plaster  figures,  or  go  in  long  white-robed 
procession  to  plant  liberty-trees,  or  amuse  itself  with  any  other 
form  of  foolery  1  No.  The  sternest  task  ever  attempted  by 
a  nation  is  that  of  inaugurating  and  supporting  freedom.  The 
man  who  governs  his  own  spirit  has  been,  on  supreme  au- 
thority, pronounced  greater  than  he  who  takes  a  city :  this 
man  has  attained  personal  freedom.  National  freedom  is 
simply  the  government  of  its  own  spirit  by  a  nation.  It  is 
the  attempt  on  the  part  of  a  people,  as  on  the  part  of  a  man, 
to  have  a  will  chainless  as  that  of  the  wildest  libertine,  and  yet 
live  and  work  with  united  energy  under  wisdom's  law.  And 
the  toils  of  ThermopylaB,  Morgarten,  and  Naseby,  were,  we 
think,  slight  to  this. 

"Latins  regnes  avidum  domaudo 
Spiritum,  quam  si  Libyam  remotis 
Gadibus  jungas,  et  uterque  Poenus 
Serviat  uni." 

There  is  no  free  people  to  which  we  may  not  address  the 
lines.  It  was  a  sublime  duty,  and  not  an  alluring  pleasure, 
whose  distant  gleam  lit  the  eyes  of  nations  as  they  looked  to 
liberty  !  To  attain  true  freedom  seems  to  us  to  demand  the 
very  last  agony  of  national  effort,  the  severe  and  final  endeavor 
by  which  a  people  at  length  reaches  its  throne. 


262  THE     SOCIAL     PROBLEM     OF     THE     AGE. 

Christianity  affords  us  the  axioms  on  which  alone  a  solution 
can  be  attempted  :  taking  from  irreligious  radicalism  the  truth 
groped  after  by  it,  and  accepting  at  the  hands  of  Mr.  Carlyle 
the  vitally  important  lessons  he  has  so  powerfully  re-proclaim- 
ed, avoiding  anarchy  on  the  one  hand  and  despotism  on  the 
other,  it  sets  the  race  on  a  path  of  unlimited  advancement. 
Christianity  pronounces  men  equal.  All  the  protests  which, 
in  the  course  of  human  history,  have  been  uttered  against  the 
oppression  of  the  poor  by  the  rich,  and  in  behalf  of  the  real 
native  majesty  of  man,  sink  into  insignificance  when  compared 
with  that  uttered  by  and  embodied  in  Christianity ;  there  is 
one  grain  of  truth  in  that  claim  which  modern  democracy, 
though  in  crazed,  and  maundering,  and  blasphemous  tones,  has 
so  often  put  forth,  to  number  the  founders  of  Christianity  in 
its  ranks.  In  express  terms,  the  Christian  revelation  declares 
all  nations  of  the  earth  to  be  of  one  blood  ;  it  pronounces  all 
men  equally  the  subjects  of  one  King  ;  it  makes  the  value  of 
a  soul  infinite,  and  shows  no  difference  between  the  worth  of 
that  of  a  beggar  and  that  of  a  prince.  Look  into  the  stable  at 
Bethlehem,  on  that  night  when  crowned  sage  and  humble  shep- 
herd knelt  by  the  cradle  of  that  Babe  who  was  their  common 
King ;  do  you  not  see,  in  that  spectacle,  the  bond  of  an  essen- 
tial equality  uniting  all  ranks,  and  making  the  regal  purple 
and  the  peasant's  russet  faint  and  temporary  distinctions? 
Well  might  Coleridge  say,  that  the  fairest  flower  he  ever  saw 
climbing  round  a  poor  man's  window,  was  not  so  beautiful  in 
his  eyes  as  the  Bible  which  he  saw  lying  within  !  If  all  classes 
forsook  the  Gospel,  one  might  expect  the  poor,  the  hard-toiling, 
the  despised,  to  cling  to  it.  Whatever  Christianity  may  have 
become  in  our  churches  and  in  our  times,  the  great  class  of 
the  workers  can  find  in  its  aspects  no  excuse  for  abandoning 
itself,  unless  they  can  show  that  the  churches  have  rewritten 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     263 

the  Bible  ;  unless  they  can  allege  that  ii  no  longer  exhibits  the 
divine  Founder  of  Christianity  preaching  to  the  poor,  com- 
panying  with  publicans  and  sinners,  bringing  into  the  bosoms 
of  harlots  the  healing  light  of  divine  love ;  unless  they  can 
show  that  it  was  the  sanctioned  usage  of  apostolic  times  to 
honor  the  rich  in  the  Christian  assemblage ;  unless,  in  one 
word,  they  can  deny  that  the  Gospel  holds  forth  to  every  man 
the  prospect  of  being  a  king  and  priest  to  God. 

But  Christianity  does  not  make  this  truth  powerless  by  leav- 
ing it  alone.  Mr.  Carlyle,  with  his  glance  of  lightning,  saw 
the  anarchy  or  the  weakness  to  which  modern  freedom  was 
tending;  government  he  knew  to  be  absolutely  necessary. 
And  this  government,  in  some  way  or  other,  must  be  vested 
in  able  men.  lie  called  on  the  nations  to  obey  their  mighti- 
est, to  worship  them  as  heroes,  and  proceeded  to  scorn  and 
scout  the  prevalent  ideas  and  hopes  of  freedom.  But  Christi- 
anity meets  this  want  too.  It  writes  down  civil  government 
as  an  ordinance  of  God.  Not  that  it  sanctions  what  has  been 
called  divine  right  or  any  such  superficial  and  absurd  notion : 
not  that,  in  any  part  or  passage  of  the  sacred  volume,  it  com- 
mands us  to  honor  any  one  for  the  blood  in  his  veins  ;  but  that 
it  recognizes  the  institution  of  government  as  a  necessity,  and 
enjoins  men  loyally  to  submit  to  it,  and  honor  the  king.  Any 
one  form  of  government  is  not  appointed ;  but  government  is 
stamped  with  approval,  and  by  the  promulgation  of  the  truth 
of  radical  equality,  a  way  is  opened  up  by  which  freedom  may 
flourish  under  any  political  form.  How  then  are  we,  in  every 
case,  to  find  our  rulers  ?  Simply  by  finding  those  who  are 
fitted  to  rule.  Is  the  fact  that  they  are  thus  fitted  the  reason 
of  our  honoring  them,  and  our  theory,  after  all,  the  same  as 
that  of  hero-worship  1  By  no  means.  Their  honor  is  reflected. 
Their  fitness  is  the  indication  of  the  reason  why  they  should 


264     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

be  honored ;  the  reason  itself  is  because  God  has  commis- 
sioned them ;  and  we  are  precisely  as  free  in  performing  the 
tasks  natm\ally  appointed  us,  as  they  in  performing  those  for 
which  He  has  fitted  them.  Thus,  as  it  embraced  the  one 
truth  of  democracy,  Christianity  embraces  every  particle  of 
truth  which  Mr.  Carlyle  has  contributed  to  human  knowledge. 
All  that  he  has  said  of  the  might  and  value  of  man,  though 
perhaps  demanding  supplement  and  modification,  can  on  these 
terms  be  accepted  without  endangering  human  freedom  ;  every 
power  of  the  hero  can  be  brought  to  serve  the  race,  and  yet 
honor  be  done  both  to  God  and  to  man.  The  greatest  will 
rule  because  God  has  given  them  the  kingdom ;  and  the  peo- 
ple shall  be  willing  in  the  day  of  His  power.  A  nation  were 
perfectly  free  and  perfectly  governed,  where  the  allied  truths 
of  equality  and  subordination  were  both  in  full  force ;  where 
not  only  the  ablest  governed,  but  where  the  channels  to  gov- 
ernment were  absolutely  unobstructed,  and  every  man  had 
the  assurance  that,  if  he  were  the  ablest,  he  would  be  gov- 
ernor. 

Now  it  is  not  by  any  means  our  assertion  or  idea,  that 
Christianity  furnishes  us  with  a  nostrum  by  which  all  the  ills  of 
society  can  be  at  once  cured,  its  weakness  turned  to  strength, 
and  its  powers  brought  into  operation ;  the  bare  fact,  that  any 
one,  whencesoever  he  derive  his  specific,  misconceives  so  far 
the  nature  of  man  and  the  evolution  of  history,  as  to  imagine 
that  the  one  is  to  be  perfected  and  the  other  brought  to  a  close 
by  a  magic  word  which  he  can  utter,  is  conclusive  evidence  of 
his  utter  incapacity.  It  is  our  conviction  that  without  Chris- 
tianity no  nation  can  be  regenerated ;  that,  unless  we  proceed 
upon  its  theory  of  man,  we  always  fixU  into  some  fatal  error; 
spreading  out  into  the  stagnant  marsh  of  weakness  and  dis- 
union, tumbling  in  cataract-foam,  writhing  madly  and  streaked 


THE     SOCIAL     PROBLEM     OF     THE     AGE.  2G5 

with  bloocl,  into  the  abyss  of  anarchy,  or  gliding  into  the.  Dead 
Sea  of  Despotism  :  but  earnest  thought  and  practical  effort  of 
our  own  are  necessary  in  addition  to  all  it  gives  us,  calm  con- 
sideration of  the  difficulties,  conditions,  and  tools  of  our  time, 
valor  to  dare  and  perseverance  to  do,  Baconian  induction  and 
Platonic  ardor.  It  is  in  this  spirit  and  with  this  consciousness 
that  we  would  offer  a  few  hints  toward  the  solution  of  that 
great  problem — To  show  Freedom  her  hands,  to  point  out 
how  the  energy  of  Despotism  may  be  in  her  reasoning  eye, 
the  power  of  Despotism  in  her  willing  arm.  It  will  be  much 
if  our  words  even  call  attention  to  this  subject,  for,  in  its  pre- 
cise nature,  we  can  not  see  that  it  has  been  fairly  grappled 
with ;  it  is  time  that  we  began  to  have  an  express  literature 
of  freedom,  that  a  systematic  attempt  were  made  by  thinkers 
to  teach  the  people  to  gird  on  the  armor  of  free  men.  Our 
meaning  will  be  fully  apprehended,  as  we  proceed  to  do  even 
that  little  which  is  here  possible. 

Casting,  in  the  present  day,  a  general  glance  on  a  free  na- 
tion, with  the  view  of  discovering  how  it  may  best  perform 
that  august  task  to  which,  by  the  fact  of  its  freedom,  it  is 
called  by  God,  we  think  we  should  find  ourselves  called  upon 
to  treat  of  each  of  the  following  departments  at  some  consid- 
erable length : — 

I.  The  central  government. 

II.  Free  association,  for  philanthropic  or  reforming  pur- 
poses. 

III.  The  relation  of  ranks. 

IV.  Municipal  government. 

In  the  brief  remarks  which  follow,  we  shall  confine  ourselves 
entirely  to  the  internal  aspects  of  a  free  state. 

Touching  the  first  of  the  above  subjects  of  discussion,  much 
were  to  be  said.     It  suggests  two  questions  :    How  is  the  gov- 

12 


266  THE     SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE 

erning  body  to  "be  got  together?  and,  To  the  discharge  of  what 
duties  is  it  competent  when  assembled  1 

With  all  its  drawbacks,  and  with  full  recognition  of  the 
dangers  to  which  it  is  exposed,  we  have  a  grounded  faith  in 
popular  election ;  we  strongly  suspect  no  method  was  ever  de- 
vised better  adapted  for  getting  the  really  strongest  man  to 
the  top.  That  the  great  preacher  of  the  duty  of  hero-worship, 
who  has  expressly  asserted  that  the  hero  must  and  shall  be 
worshiped,  should  have  given  expression  to  that  utter  denial 
of  any  power  in  the  mass  of  a  population  to  distinguish  ability 
and  worth  which  we  have  quoted,  is  surely  somewhat  singu- 
lar ;  we  thought  he  regarded  the  instincts  of  a  people  as  truer 
than  their  thoughts,  and  should  have  expected  that  he  would 
have  some  reliance  upon  the  half-articulate  consciousness  of 
men,  who  are  ever,  to  use  his  own  phraseology,  in  contact  with 
fact  and  reality.  The  philosophy  of  popular  election  we  take 
to  be,  that  it  aims  at  stripping  a  man  of  all  those  extrinsic  re- 
commendations and  assisting  influences,  which  he  might  pos- 
sess as  member  of  a  family  or  class,  and  subjecting  him  to  the 
judgment,  while  offering  him  to  the  choice,  of  so  large  a  num- 
ber of  men,  that  he  can  be  commended  to  them  solely  by  his 
individual  qualities ;  and  we  should  wish  for  no  sounder 
method,  by  which  to  discover  those  men  who,  as  ablest  ought 
to  be  set  apart  to  govern  their  country,  than  one  in  which  a 
vast  body  of  electors  contrived,  either  by  instinct  or  educa- 
tion, to  separate  from  those  presented  to  their  suffrages  every 
adventitious  circumstance,  of  birth,  wealth,  or  connections, 
and  asked  regarding  them  simply  what  were  their  personal 
qualities.  That  we  have  not  approached  this,  we  frank' y  con- 
cede ;  but  we  can  not  grant  that  no  attempt  can  be  made  to 
reach  it. 
■    Were  it  a  vain  attempt  to  endeavor  to  educate  the  popula- 


THE     SOCIAL     PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE.  26*7 

tion  of  a,  free  country  to  the  special  duties  and  functions  of 
freemen  1  It  has  been  little  thought  of.  Much  we  can  not 
doubt,  might  be  done,  both  to  awaken  a  sense  of  duty ^  and  to 
guide  to  a  selection  of  men. 

Unless  integrity  reigns  in  the  heart  of  the  free  elector,  we 
can  not  hope  for  a  happy  issue  to  the  exercise  of  his  office :  we 
say  not  that  free  constituencies  or  other  electing  bodies  are  less 
marked  by  integrity,  than  is  the  case  in  any  one  instance  where 
the  number  of  electors  is  closely  circumscribed ;  but  none  the 
less  is  there  room  for  improvement,  and  a  call  on  all  men  to 
promote  it.  Not  only  must  virtue  and  honesty,  generally  con- 
sidered, be  advocated  in  a  free  country,  but  freemen  must  be 
aroused  to  a  sense  of  the  nobleness,  the  responsibility,  the 
sacredness  of  the  distinctive  duties  of  the  free.  In  a  brave 
army,  cowardice  is  reckoned  more  to  be  shunned  than  death : 
every  brave  soldier  will  rather  die  on  his  colors  than  abandon 
Ihem.  Travelers  tell  us  of  the  Osmanli,  that,  however  reduced 
they  find  him,  how  faded  soever  the  glory  of  olden  days,  he 
yet  regards,  with  a  silent  pride,  the  saber  that  hangs  at  his  belt, 
letting  no  sj^eck  stain  its  brightness,  but  stinting  himself  rather 
than  part  with  a  jewel  in  its  sheath  :  it  seems  to  whisper  of  the 
old  might  of  Islam,  to  tell  him  that  in  his  veins  runs  the  blood 
of  conquerors,  that  he  has  in  his  heart  a  treasure  dearer  than 
life.  Now,  methinks,  a  freeman,  with  a  heart  in  his  breast, 
should  treat  an  attempt  to  buy  from  him  his  honor,  to  purchase 
his  free  voice,  as  a  true  soldier  would  a  charge  of  cowardice, 
or  a  valiant  Osmanli  a  request  to  sell  his  saber  for  a  bit  of 
bread.  Every  free-born  elector  of  Britain  or  America  pos- 
sesses the  birthright  of  a  sacred  duty ;  he  has  one  act  to  per- 
form which  is  worthy  of  the  greatest,  and  for  the  right  doing 
of  which  it  were  noble  to  die.  "  The  honor  of  a  freeman ;" — 
this;,  in  fiee  nations,  should  be  a  formula  for  the  expression  of 


268  THE     SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE. 

sometMng  stronger  than  death.  But,  on  the  -Jjther  hand,  might 
not  the  attempt  of  bribery  be  regarded  as  standing  high  in  the 
list  of  crimes?  Is  such  a  thing  impossible  as  high  treason  to 
the  people,  and  is  it  unjust  that  it  should  be  visited  as  severely 
as  high  treason  to  the  prince  1 

And  if  the  honor  of  freemen  might  be  cherished,  to  guard 
the  purity  of  election,  its  efficiency  might  unquestionably  be 
promoted  by  the  adoption  of  certain  practical  methods,  by 
which  the  body  of  electors  in  free  nations  might  be  guided,  at 
least  in  an  important  degree,  in  the  selection  of  representatives. 
It  is  surely  somewhat  strange,  that  Mr.  Carlyle,  instead  of  de- 
nouncing popular  election  in  that  unqualified  and  indignant 
manner,  did  not  think  it  might  be  possible  to  give  such  direct- 
ing hints  to  honest  electors,  as  would  aid  them  in  fixing  upon 
the  worthiest  candidate  for  their  suffrages.  Men  of  all  ranks 
having  such  an  irresistible  tendency  to  bow  down  to  the  hero, 
might  it  not  be  possible,  to  some  extent,  to  point  the  said  hero 
out?  Is  it  so  hard  to  indicate  certain  of  the  particular  difficul- 
ties and  dangers  to  be  encountered  by  the  elector  1  Would 
rough  common  sense,  when  set  on  its  guard,  be  apt  to  be 
blinded  by  cajolery  or  fliwuing?  Were  it  impossible  to 
awaken  electors  to  a  feeling  of  the  emptiness  of  mere  talk, 
and  train  them  to  a  habit  of  comparing  words  with  actions  ? 
Is  there  not  spread  widely  such  a  measure  of  intelligence 
among  our  working  men,  and  the  general  body  of  our  freemen, 
that  they  could,  especialiy  if  urged  and  instructed,  inform 
themselves  of  the  past  life  of  their  proposed  representative, 
and  judge  whether,  from  his  bearing  in  what  spheres  he  has 
occupied,  he  has  the  heart,  the  head,  the  arm  of  a  man  ?  Is  it 
altogether  hopeless,  that  they  n:)ight  learn  a  total  indifference 
to  the  jingle  of  the  guineas  in  his  purse,  and  ask  neither  of 
what  blood  he  comes,  nor  what  are  his  possessions,  but  whether 


THE     SOCIAL     PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE.  269 

he  is  a  man  of  ability,  uprightness,  informtition,  discreet  valor, 
and  religion,  worthy  to  become  a  British  lawgiver  ?  These  are 
but  a  few  lessons  which  electors  might  learn.  More  we  need 
not  add.  This  would  be  a  wide  and  important  department  in 
a  literature  of  freedom. 

So  much  directly  bearing  on  electors ;  one  word  on  those 
whom  they  may  elect.  The  question  admits,  to  say  the  least, 
of  discussion,  whether  it  is  not  advisable,  in  our  British  Is- 
lands, to  find  a  larger  body  of  men  from  which  representatives 
can  be  obtained.  Here  we  desire  to  speak  with  somewhat  of 
caution  and  hesitancy.  Yet  it  does  seem  a  reasonable  idea, 
that  a  larger  class  of  British  subjects  might,  beneficially  to  the 
commonwealth,  have  opened  up  to  them  a  path  into  the  House 
of  Commons.  The  aristocratic  and  moneyed  classes  alone  can 
enter  there.  Is  it  certain  that  there  is  not  thus  excluded  an 
important  and  available  portion  of  the  intellect  of  the  coun- 
try ?  The  shrewd,  energetic,  earnest  citizen,  of  the  lower  order 
in  the  middle  class,  accustomed  to  think  much  and  work  hard, 
enters  not.  The  bulk  of  the  intellect  of  the  powerful  fourth 
estate  must  rule  without  the  doors  of  the  Senate  House.  That 
a  powerfully-minded  member  of  the  working  class,  who  knows 
the  feelings  and  wants  of  his  brethren,  should  ever  be  admitted, 
seems  to  be  regarded  as  an  extravagant  idea ;  yet,  can  it  be 
doubted  that  such  might  prove  an  abler  senator  than  the  gam- 
bler for  fjime  with  an  abundance  of  money,  or  the  brisk  scion 
of  the  nobility,  who  can  drive  tandem  and  is  a  capital  shot? 
"We  scout  the  idea  of  paying  our  legislators  in  gold ;  we  fear 
they  occasionally  make  us  pay  for  the  honor  of  employing 
them  in  even  rarer  coin.  A  few  evils  might  arise  from  making 
it  possible  for  membership  to  become  a  trade ;  would  there 
arise  a  greater  number  than  from  continuing  to  make  it  a  fash- 
ionable amusement?    We  do  not  regard  with  any  measure  cS 


270 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 


doubt  the  flict,  that  governmg  bodies,  of  which  the  members 
have  been  or  are  paid,  have  proved  themselves  not  one  whit 
less  patriotic,  and  we  are  inclined  to  add  able,  than  those 
where  the  practice  has  never  been  introduced. 

The  question  of  the  functions  to  which  the  governing  body- 
in  a  free  nation  is  competent,  is  one  which  interests  us  very 
deeply.  The  notions  which  float  in  the  public  mind  on  thi 
subject  are,  we  think,  vague,  and  not  unfrequently  erroneous. 
There  is  a  tendency,  fatal  in  its  consequences,  and  decried  by 
earnest  men,  to  confound  true  freedom  with  laissez  faire ;  as 
if  liberty  meant  no  rule  at  all,  or  as  if  it  even  implied  any 
curtailing  of  the  executive ;  instead  of  government,  effective 
and  indefinitely  extended,  by  the  best,  with  consent  of  all. 
National  freedom,  too,  is  apt  to  be  confounded  with  individual 
liberty,  and  thus  to  lose  its  power.  A  people  may  be  nation- 
ally impotent  from  fear  to  meddle  with  personal  rights.  The 
idea  is  too  common,  that  in  a  free  state  the  government  ought 
to  exercise  little  or  no  control  over  private  affairs,  and  that 
the  state  is  free,  in  proportion  as  this  is  the  case.  It  is  forgot- 
ten that  the  essence  of  tyranny  consists,  not  in  the  fact  that 
men  obey,  but  that  they  do  so  w^ithout  knowing  and  compre- 
hending  the  reason  of  their  action ;  and  that  the  life  of  free- 
dom consists,  not  in  any  exemption  from  obeying,  but  in  obedi- 
ence after  due  exercise  of  that  will  which  God  has  implanted 
in  men  and  nations,  after  assurance  obtained  that  submission 
or  active  compliance  are  promotive  of  the  general  welfare,  and 
assent  asked  and  accorded. 

Now,  it  will  of  course  be  seen  that  we  here  advocate  no 
particular  measures ;  but  we  do  say  that  we  now  oppose  a 
misconception  of  the  very  essence  of  liberty,  one  which  dooms 
it  to  be  utterly  ineffective  for  any  great  national  end.  The  one 
characteristic  of  real  freedom  is,  that  a  nation  acts  with  consent 


THE     SOCIAL     PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE.  27l 

and  intelligence  ;  you  can  not  decide  whether  a  nation  is  free 
or  enslaved  by  knowing  lohat  its  government  does,  you  must 
know  how  it  does  it.  The  man  is  as  free  who  commands  him- 
stlf  to  be  bound,  with  express  directions  that  no  attention  be 
paid  to  any  subsequent  shrieks  or  implorings,  that  he  may 
undergo  an  excruciating  operation,  as  he  who  swpeps  the  moor- 
land on  his  own  steed,  or  gazes  over  the  face  of  a  flashing 
sea  from  the  deck  of  his  own  bounding  yacht.  We  shall  il- 
lustrate these  remarks  by  a  modern  instance.  Every  one  is 
aware  of  the  prevalency  of  what  has  been  named  bureaucracy 
on  the  Continent ;  that  government,  through  its  officials,  ex- 
ercises a  superintendence  over  most  private  business,  settling, 
it  may  be,  the  order  in  which  streets  are  to  be  built,  the 
manner  in  which  houses  are  to  be  constructed,  the  establish- 
ment of  every  sort  of  mercantile  company,  and  so  on.  This 
circumstance  produces  a  great  deal  of  intermeddling  on  the 
part  of  government  functionaries,  little  annoyances  necessarily 
arise,  and  many  arguments  are  urged  against  the  system  ;  we 
greatly  mistake  if  it  is  not  frequently  looked  upon  as  an  in- 
tegral portion  of  Continental  despotism,  and  quite  out  of  ac- 
cordance with  our  British  freedom.  We  neither  defend  nor 
impugn  the  system ;  but  we  allege  that  it  has  no  necessary 
connection  either  with  despotism  or  liberty.  If  a  nation,  act- 
ing through  men  by  itself  deputed,  men  who  represent  the 
national  will,  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  beauty  of  its 
cities  would  be  enhanced  by  their  streets  being  built  accord- 
ing to  plans  approved  by  a  body  of  artistically  qualified  men, 
it  continues  a  perfectly  free  state,  though  no  one  of  its  citizens 
can,  at  his  own  whim  or  caprice,  inflict  an  architectural  nuisance 
upon  his  fellow-townsmen.  If  it  is  discovered  by  a  nation 
that  the  malconstruction  of  private  dwellings  frequently  occa- 
sions fire  and  gives  rise  to  extensive  damage,  or  that  the  stu- 


272     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

pidity  or  carelessness  of  individuals  results  in  the  confusion 
of  titles  and  the  multiplication  of  quarrels  and  lawsuits,  it  may 
most  freely  appoint  bodies  of  judicious  men,  architects  and 
lawyers,  to  inspect  plans  and  titles.  And  so  on.  The  nation 
is  ever  free  when  itself  wills  the  restraints  which  on  itself  it 
imposes.  We  do  not  say  it  is  necessary  that  it  impose  such  ; 
by  no  means  ;  but  that  every  such  measure  is,  in  strictest  ac- 
cordance with  real  freedom,  open  for  consideration.  We  do, 
however,  go  the  length  of  saying,  and  that  with  all  emphasis 
and  earnestness,  that,  until  freedom  takes  this  positive,  and  as 
it  were  aggressive  attitude ;  until  it  learns  to  extend  its  ex- 
ecutive in  various  directions,  and  to  bring  the  sifted  intellect 
and  the  concentrated  will  of  the  nation  to  look  upon  with 
scrutinizing  glance,  and  to  order  with  energy  and  exactness,  the 
various  modes  and  departments  of  national  life,  it  will  never 
fully  unfold  its  powers.  As  yet,  it  has  not  been  fairly  pitted 
against  despotism.  It  has  been  individual  effort  in  free  na- 
tions which  has  been  matched  against  national  effort  in  despotic 
states.  We  trust  it  will  one  day  prove  possible,  with  the  per- 
fect preservation  of  individual  freedom,  of  which  more  pres- 
ently, to  pitt  national  effort  in  free  nations  against  national 
effort  in  despotisms,  and  to  demonstrate  that  the  analogy  be- 
tween the  nation  and  the  individual  here  too  holds  good  :  that, 
as  the  free  poet  sings  more  sweetly  and  more  thrillingly  than 
he  whose  song  is  heard  through  a  grating ;  and  as  three  free 
warriors  will  hurl  back  a  host  of  enslaved  invaders  ;  so  a  na- 
tion, which  freely  collects  its  reason,  and  gathers  its  will,  and 
girds  up  its  loins,  and  exerts  itself  in  all  manner  of  regulating 
and  compelling  action,  will  in  peace  tower  in  calm  wisdom,  a 
Pallas  among  the  nations,  and  in  war  ride  over  their  necks,  as 
the  proud  vessel,  with  all  sails  set  and  every  spar  in  order, 
but  with  a  living  will  on  board,  rides  over  the  poor  slaves  of 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     273 

moon  and  tempest,  the  wandering  billows.  It  were  certainly- 
competent  to  the  British  nation,  it  were  consistent  with  its 
freedom,  nay,  it  were  positively  the  awakening  to  vigor  and 
action  of  its  freedom,  to  have  all  great  public  concerns  trans- 
acted by  men  better  qualified  to  transact  them  than  private 
individuals  can  be  hoped  to  be,  by  men  who,  of  the  whole  na- 
tion, are  best  fitted  to  transact  them.  Until  this  commences 
on  a  grand  scale,  the  capacities  of  a  free  nation,  as  distinguished 
from  those  of  free  individuals,  will  not  be  unfolded.  It  ap- 
pears to  us,  that  it  is  the  general  obliviousness  to  this  great 
aspect  of  freedom,  and  the  kindred  phenomenon  of  testiness 
to  all  touching  of  so-called  private  rights,  which  have  given 
edge  and  occasion  to  such  denunciations,  on  the  part  of  Mr. 
Carlyle,  as  we  have  quoted. 

In  treating  of  the  central  government  in  a  free  country,  the 
subject  which  engages  our  attention  is  national  freedom.  In 
turning  to  the  second  of  those  categories  under  which  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  whole  matter  seemed  to  us  to  admit  of  being 
ranged,  we  are  met  by  the  distinct  yet  related  topic  of  indi- 
vidual freedom.  Association  for  philanthropic  or  reforming 
purposes  is  a  necessary  phenomenon  in  a  free  country ;  and 
of  all  the  questions  which  present  themselves  to  him  who  re- 
flects upon  the  nature  and  working  of  freedom,  it  might  be 
alleged  that  no  one  is  of  more  importance,  and  perhaps  diffi- 
culty, than  that  which  bears  upon  the  connections  and  relations 
of  this  form  of  force,  for  it  is  none  other  than  a  form  of  force, 
with  that  central  power  which,  strictly,  represents  the  thinking 
and  acting  power  of  a  free  nation.  We  believe  it  to  be  a 
prevalent  idea,  that  voluntary  association  ought  to  do  very 
much,  if  not  all,  in  a  free  country  ;  it  is  to  individual  enter- 
prise, to  the  thought  and  energy  of  the  private  subject,  attract- 
ing and  combining  into  an  available  force  the  intellects  and 
12* 


2*74     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

energies  of  his  individual  fellow-citizens,  that  we  naturally  look 
for  the  performance  of  great  undertakings ;  we  look  not  to 
government,  but  to  individual  co-operation,  for  water,  for  gas, 
for  steam  conveyance  to  the  ends  of  the  world,  for  railways 
and  electric  wires  to  cover  our  own  island.  It  is  our  profound 
conviction  that  we  may  permit  this  idea  to  carry  us  too  far  ; 
that  the  hope  of  freedom  at  present  is  to  be  placed  in  a  large 
measure  in  its  learning  to  take  up  the  tools  of  despotism  in  a 
free  hand,  and  to  perform  great  national  enterprises,  not  by 
the  blundering,  and  in  many  cases  blinded  agency  of  provincial 
association,  but  by  the  disinterested  will  of  what  in  a  perfect 
state  of  freedom  would  certainly  be,  and  even  in  an  imperfect 
state  of  freedom  we  believe  generally  is,  the  highest  intellect 
of  the  nation,  its  freely  elected  central  power.  But  we  do  not 
at  all  hesitate  in  pronouncing  voluntary  association  a  natural, 
wholesome,  and  inevitable  growth  of  freedom.  It  is  possible, 
indeed,  that  it  may  be,  to  a  large  extent,  merely  temporal ; 
and,  seeing  a  grander  possibility  of  attainment  ahead,  we  can 
not  say  we  should  regret  its  proving  to  have  been  so :  it  is 
possible  that  it  may  in  all  its  forms  mark  merely  a  stage  in 
the  life  of  free  nations,  a  part  of  a  great  system  of  practical 
education  ;  that  it  will  be  only  when  they  awaken  to  the  dangers 
of  individual  association,  when  they  find  railway  companies 
ruining  themselves  and  putting  the  public  to  inconvenience, 
water  companies  bickering  and  battling  in  the  presence  of  a 
thirsty  and  unwashed  township,  private  corporations  perpetuat- 
ing the  causes  of  disease  or  preventing  the  beautifying  of  cities, 
that  they  will  fully  and  joyously  conceive  that  it  is  nowise  in- 
consistent with  perfect  liberty  that  the  management  of  railways, 
and  we  know  not  how  much  else,  be  ultimately  vested  in  a  body 
of  national  rulers  chosen  by  themselves.  Yet  it  is  impossible, 
on  the  one  hand,  to  deny  the  fact  that  association  has  its  roots 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     275 

in  the  soil  of  liberty,  and,  on  the  other,  that  there  may,  in  any 
conceivable  case,  remain  a  work  for  it  to  do.  All  national 
freedom  is  founded  on  individual ;  the  mind  and  tongue  must 
first  be  free  ;  and  this  being  granted,  the  necessary  origin  of 
association  is  at  once  perceived  :  no  man  finds  it  good  to  be 
alone  ;  man  feels  at  once  more  happy  and  more  powerful  when 
he  acts  with  his  brothers ;  and  therefore  the  thought  in  his 
head,  the  wish  in  his  heart,  will  reach  his  tongue,  in  the  form 
of  a  request  or  exhortation,  addressed  to  other  men,  to  sympa- 
thize with  him,  or  work  along  with  him.  Christian  philan- 
thropy, of  which  we  have  said  so  much,  is  but  a  form  of  free 
association  ;  on  the  hypothesis  that  Christianity  and  Christian 
love  exist  in  a  free  nation,  its  rise  is  unavoidable. 

In  his  essay  on  The  Signs  of  the  Times,  an  essay  marked  by 
his  usual  penetrating  intellectual  energy,  and  perhaps  remark- 
able, even  among  his  essays,  for  the  brilliant  and  musical 
terseness  of  its  style,  Mr.  Carlyle  divides  the  forces  which  act 
in  human  affairs  into  the  dynamic  or  individual  forces,  love, 
religion,  enthusiasm,  and  so  on,  and  the  mechanical,  which  arise 
from  organization  and  union.  His  distinction  and  classification 
we  accept  as  correct,  but  he  has  omitted  something  which  to 
us  appears  of  great  importance,  to  define,  namely,  the  connec- 
tion between  the  two  provinces  of  human  affairs  on  which  he 
comments.  In  the  close  of  his  essay,  he  distinctly  recognizes 
the  soundness  and  necessity  of  each  set  of  forces.  But  has  he 
fully  considered  how  they  are  connected,  how  the  machinery 
and  the  dynamics  are  related?  The  connection  is  that  of 
simple,  proportional,  indissoluble  sequence.  The  machinery 
arises  from  the  dynamics,  the  organized  and  united  force  re- 
sults from  the  individual,  by  a  necessity  which  we  can  not  ex- 
hibit, because  its  negation  can  not  be  even  conceived.  An 
army  of  which  the  soldiers  are  drilled,  marshaled,  and  then 


276     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

enlisted ;  a  tree  that  unfolds  its  leaves,  and  strikes  down  its 
stem,  Vindi  finally  deposits  its  seed  ; — these  are  precisely  anal- 
ogous conceptions  to  that  of  a  society  which  has  not  originated 
in  individual  force.  Goethe  said  his  opinion  was  infinitely 
strengthened  by  the  assent  of  even  one.  In  his  aphorism  is 
to  be  found  the  sole  possible  explication  of  that  machinery  for 
the  carrying  on  of  various  objects,  which  seems  to  Mr.  Carlyle 
to  be  in  such  excess  in  our  time.  An  individual  or  dynamic 
force  acts  in  an  individual  bosom  ;  it  is  communicated  to  an- 
other bosom,  to  a  third,  to  a  fourth :  these  all  now  have  a  com- 
mon bond,  a  common  force  ;  a  society,  an  organization,  if  you 
w^ill,  a  machine,  is  formed.  The  machinery  must  always  be  in 
a  precise  ratio  to  the  dynamics.  Whence  is  it,  then,  that  we 
see  so  little  machinery  in  the  olden  time,  say  in  the  time  of 
Luther,  and  so  much  in  our  day  ?  For  a  simple  and  conclu- 
sive reason.  Before  Luther  could  at  all  disseminate  his  views, 
he  also  had,  by  immovable  necessity,  to  find  and  form  his 
machinery  ;  men  heard  his  voice,  and  gathered  round  him,  and 
he  was  speedily  in  the  center  of  a  square  with  fixed  bayonets, 
powerful  for  aggression  or  defense.  The  effectiveness  of  this 
square,  besides,  depended  precisely  on  the  amount  of  the  dy- 
namic force  in  each  breast ;  the  more  perfect  the  individual, 
the  more  perfect  the  machine. 

But  Luther,  or  any  other  man  of  Luther's  time,  had  a  much 
harder  task  to  perform  in  securing  his  machinery,  than  any 
man  can  have  now-a-days.  It  is,  we  have  seen,  the  great  lead- 
ing characteristic  of  our  age,  that  thought  is  more  fluent,  that 
men  more  easily  communicate  and  draw  together,  than  was  ever 
the  case  in  this  world.  It  is  because  every  dynamic  force  can 
now,  with  extreme  facility,  gather  round  it  a  machinery, 
that  the  land  is  covered  with  organizations  and  societies.  Had 
Luther  lived  now,  he  had  found  it  a  more  easy  task  to  spread 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     27  Y 

his  doctrines  than  he  did  in  the  sixteenth  century,  but  he  could 
not  by  any  possibility  have  spread  them  without  gathering 
round  him  a  living  machine  of  men.  If,  therefore,  desirous  of 
urging  a  point,  we  said  that  Mr.  Carlyle,  in  opposing  these  two 
provinces  of  our  affairs,  in  saying  we  have  too  much  machinery, 
and  too  little  dynamics,  gave  expression  to  a  sheer  natural  im- 
possibility, we  should  speak  the  actual  truth ;  every  human 
organization  must  originate  in  dynamic,  in  individual  force.  The 
truth,  of  course,  is,  that  it  is  in  the  latter  we  are  always  to 
look  for  the  evil ;  change  the  quality  of  your  dynamic  force, 
and  all,  save  some  matter  of  practical  detail,  is  done  ;  and  we 
most  willingly  put  this  interpretation  upon  Mr.  Carlyle's  essay, 
and  benefit  by  his  superb  enforcement  of  the  great  duty  of 
purifying  the  nation's  heart  that  the  issues  of  its  life  may  be 
pure.  In  those  stern  old  ages,  it  was  a  serious  matter  for  a 
man  to  gain  his  machinery  ;  it  was  only  when  he  saw,  as  by 
the  light  of  a  cherub's  sword,  and  felt  himself  commanded  to 
speak  as  by  a  voice  from  a  bush  burning  yet  not  consumed, 
that  he  would  risk  his  life  for  his  doctrine.  In  our  day,  every 
man,  who  has  a  crotchet  and  a  well  or  not  very  well  hung 
tongue,  can  gather  his  company,  can  form  his  association,  can 
construct  his  machine.  Would  you  wonder  that  the  flower 
which  grows  in  the  hothouse  has  a  sicklier  look,  than  that 
whose  roots  had  to  cling  to  the  solid  rock  in  the  scowl  of  the 
norland  blast  ?  Mr.  Carlyle  looked  over  the  luxuriant  field 
of  modern  society,  and  saw  the  growth  of  organizations  most 
abundant,  in  great  measure  a  growth  of  weeds ;  accepting  the 
hard-won  conditions  of  our  time,  we  recognize  it  as  well  that 
plants  spring  quickly,  but  would  direct  all  energy  to  pluck  up 
such  weeds,  and  to  examine  the  seed  sown. 

In  the  brief  glance  we  took  at  the  development  of  modern 
philanthropy,  in  our  chapter  on  Wilberforce,  we  offered  one  or 


278  THE     SOCIAI     PROBLEM     OF     THE     AGE. 

two  suggestions,  which  will  be  found  applicable  tc  the  working 
of  free  associations  in  general.  We  can  not  enter  further  up- 
on the  subject,  inviting  and  important  as  it  is ;  the  reader  will 
find  it  treated,  in  several  of  its  important  aspects,  by  modern 
writers  on  political  economy. 

On  the  subject  of  the  relation  between  rank  and  rank  in  a 
free  state,  we  could  enlarge  to  an  indefinite  extent,  but  we  shall 
say  almost  nothing.  It  is  unnecessary  to  enter  on  its  discus- 
sion, so  ably  and  lucidly  has  it  been  treated  by  Mr.  Mill,  Mr. 
Greg,  and  others.  The  only  relation  which  we  can  in  future 
hope  to  see  subsist  between  employer  and  employed,  is  that 
which  we  have  seen  uniting  Budgett  and  his  men.  "  We  have 
entered,"  says  Mr.  Mill,  "  into  a  state  of  civilization,  in  which 
the  bond  that  attaches  human  beings  to  one  another,  must  be 
disinterested  admiration  and  sympathy  for  personal  qualities, 
or  gratitude  for  unselfish  services,  and  not  the  emotions  of  pro- 
tectors toward  dependents,  or  of  dependents  toward  protect- 
ors." It  seems  to  us  a  demonstrable  point  that  this  relation  is 
at  once  possible  and  noble ;  and  while  we  do  not  by  any  means 
disguise  from  ourselves  its  difficulty,  we  can  sympathize  with 
no  attempt  to  replace  it  by  another.  We  think  we  can  detect 
a  two  fold  error  by  which  it  is  impeded.  One  half  of  society 
lauds  freedom  in  name,  and  even,  verbally,  evinces  a  desire 
that  it  should  be  extended  to  all :  while  there  is  either  an 
ignorance  of  its  real  character,  demands,  and  difficulties,  or  an 
unwillingness  to  meet  them  ;  a  backwardness,  above  all,  to 
embrace,  in  all  its  significance,  the  essential  truth  of  freedom, 
that  the  soul  of  every  man  is  of  equal  worth,  and,  of  natural 
consequence,  the  hardship  or  inconvenience  of  one  class,  save 
where  special  injustice  is  involved,  no  more  to  be  deprecated 
than  those  of  another.  When  the  rich  think  of  the  poor,  the 
ruling  and  enjoying  classes  of  the  toiling  and  obeying,  their 


THE     SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE.  2*79 

ideas  run  mainly,  wc  suspect,  on  the  rctaiiring  of  these  in  quiet 
and  content,  in  comfort,  indeed,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  in  happiness 
(for  we  are  very  tender-hearted),  but  in  a  condition  of  inferi- 
ority ;  and  if  this  is  the  case,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that 
the  patronized  classes  may  entertain  a  half  suspicion  of  kind- 
ness, as  if  allied  to  charity.  On  the  other  hand,  we  think  we 
perceive  among  the  working-classes,  in  their  yearning  toward 
freedom,  an  error,  if  possible,  still  more  pernicious  :  the  idea 
that  this  liberty  for  which  they  long,  is  a  certain  worldly  good ; 
a  dim,  half-conscious  notion,  that  the  free  are  those  who  sit  at 
a  well-furnished  table,  while  the  only  partially  free  or  enslaved 
pick  up  the  crumbs  ;  and  that  the  grand  object  of  these  last  is 
just  to  change  places.  Of  the  unnumbered  errors  that  went  to 
compound  the  idea  to  which  the  patriot  Frenchman  of  1793 
gave  the  title  of  freedom,  perhaps  none  was  more  insulting  to 
the  name  of  liberty  and  the  soul  of  man,  than  the  conception, 
ever  emerging  in  the  tumult  of  the  time,  that  freedom  meant 
the  procuring  of  some  great  accession  of  eatables  and  drinka- 
bles by  the  populace  ;  that  it  would  prove  the  opening  of  ex- 
haustless  breasts  of  abundance ;  that  it  was  to  be,  in  great 
measure,  the  satisfaction  of  the  strong  but  not  very  sublime 
human  faculty  of  greed.  Now,  there  was  just  a  particle  of 
truth  here,  the  particle,  namely,  that  in  a  state  of  perfect  free- 
dom, the  physical  condition  of  all  classes  would  be  the  best 
possible  in  the  circumstances ;  but  this  is  precisely  the  lowest 
truth,  for  the  sake  of  which  a  man  can  desire  freedom  ;  and  a 
pre-eminent  cause  why  the  stern  republican  goddess  poured 
such  indignant  contempt  upon  the  worship  offered  her  by  the 
patriots  of  France,  was,  that  they  forgot  the  high  blessings  she 
sheds  upon  the  spirit,  and  bent  before  her  with  the  prayer  that 
she  would  degrade  herself  to  minister  first  and  chiefly  to  the 
body.     Freedom  does  not  absolutely  guarantee  physical  opu- 


280     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

lence  to  any  class ;  her  aim  is  to  fix  every  man  in  Ms  station, 
and  give  him  there  his  desert  :  to  enable,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
workman  to  toil  with  n :  feeling  of  inferiority  or  self-contempt, 
in  the  sense  that  it  is  not  man  and  injustice,  but  God  and 
nature,  which  ordain  his  labor  and  appoint  his  sphere,  and  in 
the  deliberate  and  intelligent  belief,  that  it  is,  in  all  respects, 
physical  and  spiritual,  best  for  him  that  the  man  whom  he 
obeys  actually  commands  him,  receiving,  in  respect  of  severer 
and  more  precious  work,  a  higher  reward ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  take  every  ray  of  insulting  pride  or  condescending 
insolence  out  of  the  eye  of  the  master,  as  having  no  essential 
superiority  over  his  employed,  as  deserving  a  kindly  respect 
but  no  reverence,  as  simply  doing,  in  his  sphere,  that  duty 
which  his  equal  but  not  equally  endowed  brother  does  in  his. 

Whether  the  precise  form  of  the  relation  between  the  indus- 
trious classes  and  those  who  employ  them  may,  to  any  consid- 
erable extent,  and  at  an  approaching  time,  undergo  alteration, 
is  a  question  of  no  small  interest.  We  do  not  regard  it  as  a 
matter  open  to  dispute  that  the  gradual  superseding  of  the  an- 
cient method,  of  wages  given  by  a  master  and  work  done  by  a 
servant,  is,  in  extensive  departments  of  our  affairs,  possible  and 
desirable.  We  see  no  effective  mode  of  counteracting  that 
often-deprecated  tendency  of  civilization  to  concentrate  wealth 
in  certain  quarters,  save  by  carrying  out  the  principles  of  co- 
operation in  the  manufacturing,  and  perhaps  also  the  mercan- 
tile provinces ;  this,  certainly,  is  a  thoroughly  efficient  means 
of  that  counteraction  ;  and  it  were  hard  to  say  how  there  could 
be  pointed  out,  on  the  whole,  a  more  perfectly  wholesome  and 
promising  phenomenon  in  a  state,  than  that  of  workmen,  by 
force  of  thrift,  sobriety,  education,  and  sense,  becoming  their 
own  employers.  The  achievement  here  being  lofty,  the  task 
is  again  difficult;  but  we  would  fain  cherish  the  hope  that 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     281 

there  is  a  stamina  in  the  British  working  class  ultimately  to 
effect  it.  Mr.  Greg  has  discussed  this  subject  in  a  truly  mas- 
terly manner. 

To  tell  the  working  classes  that  they  are  perfectly  enlight- 
ened and  endowed  with  every  manly  virtue,  that  they  are, 
therefore,  unjustly  treated  by  the  higher  ranks,  while  their 
country  suffers  from  their  not  sharing  more  largely  in  political 
rights,  is  an  extremely  easy,  but  signally  useless  proceeding. 
We  look  with  no  forbidding  coldness  on  attempts  which  may 
be  made  toward  any  really  valua''>le  extension  of  those  rights; 
but  we  deem  it  gross  flattery  to  our  lower  classes  in  general, 
to  say,  that  they  stand  remarkably  high  in .  culture  and  moral 
worth ;  we  think  the  flict  does  not  admit  of  disguise,  that  the 
work  of  their  education,  using  the  word  in  its  widest  sense,  has 
yet,  in  very  great  measure,  to  be  done,  and  that  it  will  be  no 
easy  task ;  while  it  is  our  profound  conviction,  that  Britain,  as 
a  whole,  possesses  such  an  amount  of  freedom,  that  no  class 
within  its  borders,  morally  and  intellectually  strong,  can  be 
long  defrauded  of  its  substantial  rights  or  excluded  from  its 
natural  station.  We  have  not  to  Avin  our  freedom  ;  we  have 
but  to  learn  to  use  it ;  and  we  think  both  that  the  higher  clas- 
ses may  learn  boldness  in  proceeding  with  reform,  and  the 
lower  encouragement  in  waiting,  from  the  fact  that  revolution 
for  the  attainment  of  any  political  privileges  in  our  island 
would  now  constitute  an  absolute  novelty  in  the  history  of  na- 
tions. Can  any  man  conceive  so  large  a  number  of  British  -citi- 
zens as  would  constitute  a  force  sufficient  to  make  itself  felt  by 
the  government  of  the  empire,  deliberately  putting  life  and  liv- 
ing to  the  hazard  for  all  that  an  almost  ideal  reform  could  offer  1 
Or,  on  the  other  hand,  can  any  man  fiiirly  consider  the  state  of 
feeling  in  our  higher  classes  toward  the  lower,  the  desire  of  fair 
play  and  equitable  sharing  of  the  advantages  of  liberty,  which 


282     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

may  be  pronounced  universal,  and  the  encouraging  sympathy 
and  glad  accordance  of  aid,  which  abound  to  an  unexampled  ex- 
tent, and  maintain,  that  any  reform  of  real  value,  upon  which  the 
great  body  of  the  working  class,  not  any  pitiful  and  fractional 
portion  of  the  scum  and  froth  of  that  class,  as  in  the  Chartist 
movement,  has  earnestly  set  its  heart,  will  be  long  denied  it  *? 
Any  particular  scheme  of  all-effecting  political  attainment  will 
for  the  future  prove  a  mere  ignis  fatuus,  a  mere  deluding,  dis- 
tracting phantom  to  our  working  classes,  turning  them  from 
the  path  of  their  real  interests,  blinding  them  to  their  substan- 
tial hopes.  In  moral  and  intellectual  education  ;  in  the  acqui- 
sition of  an  intellectual  power  to  discern  their  true  position, 
with  all  its  possibilities  and  perils,  as  affected  by  modern  in- 
vention, and  of  a  moral  ability  to  accommodate  themselves 
thereto  ;  in  gradually  becoming  fit  to  be  their  own  masters  ; 
in  bridling  passion,  and  subduing  intoxication ;  lies  the  true 
game  of  the  working  classes. 

The  method  in  which  this  great  and  momentous  process  of 
education  is  to  be  proceeded  with,  can  not  be  here  discussed. 
We  shall  merely,  in  one  or  two  words,  guard  against  what  we 
deem  an  important  misconception,  and  indicate  the  precise 
quarter  in  which  promising  efforts  are  to  be  made. 

Mr.  Ruskin,  a  man  concerning  whom,  whatever  may  be  the 
minor  diversities  of  opinion,  it  seems  agreed,  that  his  entrance 
upon  literature  will,  in  all  time  to  come,  mark  an  epoch,  and 
that  one  of  beneficent  change  and  noble  advancement,  in  the 
history  of  art,  has  lately  turned  his  attention,  to  some  con 
siderable  extent,  to  certain  of  our  social  aspects.  With 
nobleness  the  more  beautiful  that  it  is  evinced  with  manifest 
unconsciousness,  and  which  is  of  a  sort  very  rarely  found 
among  men  who,  like  him,  have  devoted  life-long  and  concen- 
trated attention  to  any  one  department,  whether  of  science, 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     283 

literature,  or  art,  he  deliberately,  in  a  small  volume  which  he 
has  lately  published,  declares  the  most  important  portion  of 
the  whole  of  a  great  work  devoted  to  the  advocacy  of  particu- 
lar ideas  in  pure  art,  to  be  that  which  most  men  would  have 
either  overlooked  or  considered  a  point  of  incidental  and  sec- 
ondary interest,  their  bearing  upon  the  true  liberty,  the  real 
advant<age,  in  one  word,  the  life,  of  the  workman.  This  de- 
claration he  associates  with  a  complaint,  that,  save  in  a  single 
instance,  critics  have  overlooked  the  chapter  in  which  he  lias 
discussed  the  point.  His  remonstrance  is  no  doubt  reasonable ; 
the  chapter  deserved  serious  consideration.  That  considera- 
tion we  are  the  more  willing  to  bestow,  from  an  unwavering 
assurance,  that  the  truth  which  lies  in  his  words  must  prove 
useless  or  even  dangerous,  if  not  dissociated  from  the  import- 
ant oversight  and  the  essential  error  which  we  remark  in  his 
paragraphs.  We  shall  quote  one  or  two  of  his  words  : — "  I 
know  not  if  a  day  is  ever  to  come  when  the  nature  of  right 
freedom  will  be  understood,  and  when  men  will  see  that  to 
obey  another  man,  to  labor  for  him,  yield  reverence  to  him  or 
to  his  place,  is  not  slavery.  It  is  often  the  best  kind  of  liberty 
— liberty  from  care."  Again  : — "  There  might  be  more  free- 
dom in  England,  though  her  feudal  lords'  lightest  words  were 
worth  men's  lives,  and  though  the  blood  of  the  vexed  husband- 
man dropped  in  the  furrows  of  her  fields,  than  there  is  while 
the  animation  of  her  multitudes  is  sent  like  fuel  to  feed  the 
factory  smoke,  and  the  strength  of  them  is  given  daily  to  be 
wasted  into  the  fineness  of  a  web,  and  racked  into  the  exact- 
ness of  a  line."  To  remedy  this  sad  state  of  matters,  he  offers 
three  suggestions,  in  the  form  of  advices,  to  those  who,  directly 
or  indirectly,  employing  workmen,  expose  themselves  to  the 
danger  of  falling  into  the  guilt  of  slaveholding.  The  second 
and  third  are  almost  corollaries  from  the  first,  and  the  latter 


284  THE     SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE. 

has  reference  exclusively  to  art.  The  first  is  as  follows  : — 
"  Never  encourage  the  manufacture  of  any  article  not  abso- 
lutely necessary,  in  the  production  of  which  Invention  has  no 
share." 

We  think  we  need  not  now  tarry  to  prove  that,  in  speaking 
of  freedom  as  a  liberty  from  care,  Mr.  Ruskin  totally  miscon- 
ceives its  nature ;  that  its  precise  and  essential  characteristics 
are  will  and  ability  to  undertake  this  same  honorable  and 
manlike,  though,  no  doubt,  at  times  oppressive  care ;  that  ex- 
emption from  the  labor  of  personal  and  earnest  thought  is  the 
most  tempting  of  all  the  bribes  of  despotism,  and  its  deliberate 
and  unalterable  rejection,  the  express  act  by  which  a  man  vin- 
dicates his  title  and  asserts  his  power  to  be  free.  When  rev- 
erence is  the  hereditary  claim  of  any  man,  or  set  of  men,  when 
the  word  of  one  man  is  worth  the  life  of  another,  no  soft  cush- 
ions of  indolence  on  which  to  lie,  no  dealing  out  of  dainties 
on  which  to  batten,  can  effect  any  change  in  the  essentially 
despotic  and  slavish  construction  of  society.  This  original  and 
ruining  flaw  in  his  conception  of  freedom  must  weaken  and  un- 
settle the  whole  system  of  Mr.  Ruskin's  thinking  on  the  sub- 
ject. But,  leaving  this,  let  us  inquire  into  the  worth  of  his 
recommendation  as  to  invention.  We  think  it  is  of  important 
value ;  but  let  us  carefully  define  the  limits  of  its  operation. 
No  minute  investigation  or  very  deep  reflection  is  necessary  to 
enable  us  to  do  so  :  we  have  not  to  inquire  how  far,  in  the  sev- 
eral departments  of  our  national  work,  the  action  of  individual 
invention  may  be  combined  with  the  agency  of  machinery : 
we  have  but  to  refer,  on  the  one  hand,  to  the  positive  super- 
seding of  the  human  arm,  by  that  steam-power  which,  in  all 
provinces  of  manufactures,  does  the  work  of  millions,  and,  on 
the  other,  to  the  numerous  trades  in  which  the  labor  is  entirely 
and  necessarily  mechanical.     The  unnumbered  thousands  who 


THE     SOCIAL     PROBLEM     OP    THE     AGE.  285 

toil  in  factories,  work,  according  to  the  objection,  in  a  manner 
purely  mechanical.  If  Mr.  Ruskin  proposes  to  cast  the  steam- 
engine  back  into  the  womb  of  oblivion,  we  shall  not  answer 
him ;  if  the  mechanical  action  of  those  who  watch  the  huge 
wheels  as  they  set  in  motion  a  thousand  looms,  is  a  necessary 
and  unchangeable  fact,  we  can  not  consider  that  we  have  any 
choice  save  to  accept  it  and  make  the  most  of  it.  And  how  is 
mvention  to  be  brought  to  bear  in  many  ancient  and  indispen- 
sable callings  1  The  plowman  and  the  sower  must  lay  furrow 
over  furrow,  and  cast  the  corn  across  the  fallow  ground,  much 
in  the  manner  of  their  fathers.  We  see  not  how  the  baker  or 
slater  can  show  much  invention  in  the  exercise  of  their  voca- 
tions, and  we  think  any  attempt  on  their  part  to  do  so  were 
decidedly  to  be  deprecated.  An  inventive  shopkeeper,  who 
departed  from  established  usage  in  the  disposal  of  his  goods, 
and  manifested  a  talent  for  eloquence  in  their  recommendation, 
would,  we  trust,  speedily  be  bankrupt ;  the  navvy  is  a  suffi- 
ciently respectable  citizen,  and  a  set  of  navvies  at  their  work 
a  noble  and  exhilarating  spectacle,  but  if  each  of  the  gang  took 
to  an  original  mode  of  shoveling  the  earth  and  using  the  pick- 
ax, it  might,  especially  if  they  happened  to  belong  to  the  sis- 
ter isle,  partake  of  the  comic;  the  grim-looking  personage 
whose  bright  eyes  look  out  from  a  blackened  and  streaming 
visage,  and  whose  Cyclopean  arms  hammer  the  white-hot  iron, 
beyond  aiming  well  and  hitting  hard,  has  little  to  attempt  in 
the  way  of  discovery ;  and  any  attempt  to  find  a  vent  for 
original  genius  in  that  useful  and  elevated  profession,  sweeping 
of  chimneys,  would  full  surely  end  in  smoke.  The  fact  is  per- 
fectly plain  :  it  is  but  to  a  fractional  part  of  our  working  popu- 
lation that  Mr.  Ruskin's  suggestions  can  apply.  But  to  a  frac- 
tional part  it  does,  and  that  in  a  very  important  manner.  Mr. 
Ruskin  is  a  writer  on  art,  and  it  is  natural  that  his  general 


286     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

views  should  be  colored  by  his  continual  thinking  on  art  and 
its  kindred  subjects.  Invention  is  the  soul  of  art;  but  the 
common  handicrafts  of  life  are  in  great  measure  its  absolute 
negation.  We  sympathize  unreservedly  in  his  every  word,  in 
so  far  as  artistic  matters  are  concerned ;  we  agree,  too,  that  in 
all  provinces  where  invention  can  be  profitably  and  naturally 
introduced,  it  is  to  be  encouraged ;  and  we  think  he  throws  out 
an  available  and  weighty  hint,  when  he  bids  all  classes  consider 
what  sort  of  handiwork  they  chiefly  encourage,  and  how  it 
affects  the  health  and  freedom  of  the  workman  :  but  when  he 
ventures  to  cast  his  eye  over  that  vast  tree  of  national  life  of 
which  art  is  but  the  final  flower,  and  in  each  leaf,  where  is  to 
be  expected  only  the  sober  and  accustomed  green,  looks  foi 
the  golden  and  roseate  beauty  which  is  naturally  to  be  sought 
in  that  crowning  efflorescence  of  existence  to  which  he  has  de- 
voted his  powers,  we  can  not  question  that  he  errs. 

What  intellectual  and  moral  education  can  be  introduced 
into  the  working  of  each  of  the  employments  of  the  body  of 
the  people,  we  should  rejoice  to  see  taken  advantage  of;  but 
it  were  deeply  to  be  deplored  if  the  benefits  to  be  hence  de- 
rived prevented  our  clearly  perceiving  the  direction  in  which 
the  most  important  progress  is  to  be  made.  It  is  not  by  en- 
tering on  the  fantastic  undertaking  of  getting  rid  of  machinery, 
but  by  making  it  do  for  us  our  rude  and  physical  work,  that 
we  can  advance.  As  by  a  spell  of  supreme  potency,  modern 
science  and  invention  have  summoned  to  our  aid,  to  be  our 
unresisting  and  irresistible  slaves,  the  mechanical  powers  which 
thunder  in  a  thousand  factories,  and  hang  their  black  smoke- 
banners  over  our  towns.  Is  it  impossible,  that  such  advan- 
tage be  taken  of  their  capabilities  that  a  larger  amount  of 
leisure  than  heretofore  may  be  found  for  purely  intellectual 
pursuits  by  our  mechanical  workmen  1     And  may  not  the  in- 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     287 

ventive  exercise,  which  was  formerly  found  iu  individual  op- 
erations, l)c  advantageously  foregone,  for  the  sake  of  the  en- 
hanced freshness  of  intellect  and  keenness  of  relish,  with  which 
he,  who  has  been  engaged  during  working  hours  in  a  mechan- 
ical employment,  will  turn  at  its  close  to  the  pursuit  of  science, 
or  the  study  of  literature  1  If  we  can  not  regard  this  prospect 
with  hope,  we  must  abandon  hope  altogether ;  to  break  asunder 
our  engines  and  quench  our  furnaces,  all  will  concede,  were  an 
attempt  which  could  originate  only  in  a  delirious  dream :  but 
there  are  not  wanting  facts  to  justify  us  in  cherishing  the  ex- 
pectation, that  indefniite  advancement  is  here  possible.  The 
manuflicturing  workmen,  we  understand  from  Mr.  M'Culloch, 
are  a  particularly  intelligent  class ;  and  the  free  libraries  of 
Manchester  and  Liverpool,  with  the  ranges  of  quiet,  studious, 
dignified,  and  happy  readers,  which  we  have  seen  in  at  least 
one  of  them,  give  surely  a  conclusive  testimony  to  the  truth 
of  our  words.  And  if  workmen  gradually  became  their  own 
masters,  and  could  thus  to  some  extent  control  the  feverish  in- 
tensity of  manufacturing  competition,  how  nobly  consistent 
with  freedom,  and  how  plainly  practicable,  were  this  whole 
scheme  of  advancement !  Our  hope,  then,  of  the  education  of 
the  working  class  rests  on  two  things :  first,  that  working  hours 
should  be  shortened;  and,  second,  that  operatives  prove  them- 
selves possessed  of  the  moral  power,  and  the  capability  of  in- 
tellectual pleasure,  which  alone  would  make  such  curtailment 
a  blessing,  and  not  a  curse.  Let  no  one  imagine  we  are  insen- 
sible to  the  difficulties  which  are  to  be  met  with  in  any  attempt 
at  improvement  here ;  we  know  them  to  be  stern,  complicated, 
all  but  overpowering ;  but  however  steep  and  rugged  the  way, 
there  is  no  other.  Did  we  say  the  attainment  of  perfect  spir- 
itual freedom  was  easy  1 

We  have  left  ourselves  no  space  to  speak  of  Municipal  Gov- 


288  THE    SOCIAL    PROBLEM     OF    THE     AGE. 

ernment.  We  can  merely  express  our  profound  feeling  of  its 
importance — our  conviction  that,  if  our  towns  are  to  be  beau- 
tified and  cleared,  if  we  must  not  relinquish  every  hope  of 
such  an  artistic  education  for  the  mass  of  our  people  as  is  pre- 
sented by  the  very  streets  of  certain  Continental  towns — if,  in 
one  word,  all  those  local  duties  and  reforms  are  to  be  rightly 
performed,  to  which  a  central  government  can  not,  under  any 
circumstances,  be  expected  to  direct  its  attention,  the  Munici- 
pal Institutions  of  a  large  empire  must  be  in  free  and  vigorous 
working. 

We  have  thus,  in  faint  and  partial  outline,  traced  at  least 
the  initial  steps  in  what,  without  unsettling  any  part  of  our 
social  system,  without  any  startling  innovation,  and  without 
the  very  possibility  of  revolution,  might  prove  a  thorough  and 
all-embracing  reform.  We  can  imagine  our  words  appearing 
to  some  to  have  an  unreal  and  Utopian  sound,  and  it  had  been 
easy  to  throw  ourselves  open  to  this  charge ;  but  we  think  we 
have  not  in  any  measure  done  so.  It  were  surely  a  depress- 
ing consideration,  if,  to  the  calmest  and  most  careful  thought, 
it  seemed  an  impossibility  that  freedom  might  yet  achieve 
triumphs  unexampled,  perhaps  undreamed  of,  in  the  history 
of  the  world.  It  were  Utopian,  indeed,  if  we  represented  the 
attainment  as  easy ;  and  all  we  have  said  would  deserve  to  be 
put  aside  with  a  pitying  smile,  if  we  fancied  that  by  one  effort, 
or  through  the  wisdom,  theoretic  and  practical,  of  any  one 
scheme,  a  nation  was  to  be  regenerated.  But  if  we  confess 
that  the  realization  of  perfect  freedom  appears  to  us,  in  every 
aspect,  a  work  of  difficulty  ;  and  ground  our  hopes  of  this  real- 
ization upon  the  gradual,  almost  or  altogether  imperceptible 
pervasion  of  the  nation  by  a  deeper  nobleness  and  a  more 
substantial  intelligence ;  we  see  not  on  what  a  charge  of  Uto- 
pianism  can  be  based.     We  can  not  even  profess  to  entertain 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE.     289 

immediate  or  sanguine  hope  ;  but  we  will  not  relinquish  a  pro- 
found conviction  of  possibility,  or  a  clear  assurance  of  duty. 
And  as  we  set  out  from  Christianity,  as  we  found  in  it  the 
basis  upon  which  a  system  of  free  social  relations  could  be 
reared,  it  is  only  by  returning  to  Christianity,  and  finding  in 
it  a  golden  band  to  unite  the  whole  in  safety,  harmony,  and 
beauty,  that  we  can  irrefragably  demonstrate  the  possibility, 
while  assured  it  is  the  sole  possibility,  of  the  execution  of  our 
scheme.  The  real  happiness  of  freedom  was  never  in  the 
course  of  human  history  attained  by  a  nation  morally  weak, 
licentious,  irreverent,  feeling  itself  bound  by  no  relations  to  an 
unseen  world.  The  alliance  of  freedom  and  irreligion,  which 
we  have  seen  attempted  in  these  latter  ages,  is  anomalous  and 
impossible.  Show  me  a  sniffling,  unbelieving,  debauched, 
playacting  thing,  gesticulating  on  its  platform  or  stump,  swell- 
ing with  conceit  and  self-importance,  listening  open-eared  for 
any  faint  breath  of  applause,  basely  flattering  the  crowd  before 
it,  mere  animal  greed  in  its  eye,  and  mere  tirade  about  the 
felicity  of  the  rich  and  the  removal  of  taxes  on  its  lips,  and  I 
will  show  you  that  which  no  earthly  power  will  ever  make 
free.  That  heart  has  not  wddth  enough  to  hold  the  love  of 
freedom,  that  poor  head  can  not  form  its  very  conception  ;  it 
is  but  an  imaginary  and  absurd  delusion  of  which  that  tongue 
is  prating :  freedom  disowns  the  whole  exhibition.  But  show 
me  a  working  man,  who,  from  his  free  fireside,  with  his  own 
loving  wife  beside  him,  and  his  children  smiling  in  his  face, 
can  look  beyond  earth  and  time,  and  see  a  King,  from  whom 
he  holds  a  charter  of  freedom,  seated  on  an  eternal  throne, 
the  rays  from  His  eye  falling  equally  on  the  king  and  the 
peasant,  the  oak  and  the  lichen ;  who  has  not  contracted  his 
wishes  and  thoughts  upon  the  spreading  of  his  table  and  the 
covering  of  his  back,  or  any  thing  which  he  will  have  to  sur- 

13 


290     THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  AGE. 

render  to  the  cold  grasp  of  death  ;  who  has  not  denied  his  im- 
material existence,  but  knows  that  it  is  as  a  thinking,  reason- 
ing, loving  spirit,  that  man  has  a  real  existence  and  a  peren- 
nial nobleness ;  and  I  will  show  you  one  on  whom  freedom 
will  look  with  hope.  Hear  the  calm  testimony  of  history  on 
this  point :  the  following  passage,  on  the  disbanding  of  the 
great  army  of  Puritanism,  with  which  we  close  this  Book,  is, 
we  believe,  a  testimony  to  the  power  of  Christianity  to  fit  a 
nation  for  conjoining  freedom  with  law,  to  which  no  philo- 
sophic system  can  even  pretend  to  adduce  a  parallel,  which 
stands  absolutely  alone,  in  the  annals  of  man  : — 

"  Fifty  thousand  men,  accustomed  to  the  profession  of  arm?, 
were  at  once  thrown  on  the  world :  and  experience  seemed  to 
warrant  the  belief  that  this  change  would  produce  much  mise- 
ry and  crime,  that  the  discharged  veterans  would  be  seen  beg- 
ging in  every  street,  or  would  be  driven  by  hunger  to  pillage. 
But  no  such  result  followed.  In  a  few  months  there  remained 
not  a  trace  indicating  that  the  most  formidable  army  in  the 
world  had  been  absorbed  into  the  mass  of  the  community. 
The  royalists  themselves  confessed  that,  in  every  department 
of  honest  industry,  the  discarded  warrior  prospered  beyond 
other  men,  that  none  was  charged  with  any  theft  or  robbery, 
that  none  was  heard  to  ask  an  alms,  and  that,  if  a  baker,  a 
mason,  or  a  wagoner,  attracted  notice  by  his  diligence  and  so- 
briety, he  was  in  all  probability  one  of  Oliver's  old  soldiers." 


BOOK   T¥0 


CHRISTIANITY  THE   BASIS   OF  INDIVIDUAL 
CHARACTER. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTORY  :    A  FEW  WORDS  ON  MODERN  DOUBT. 

"  Those,"  says  Mackintosh,  "  who  are  early  accustomed  to 
dispute  first  principles,  are  never  likely  to  acquire  in  a  suffi- 
cient degree  that  earnestness  and  that  sincerity,  that  strong 
love  of  truth  and  that  conscientious  solicitude  for  the  formation 
of  just  opinions,  which  are  not  the  least  virtues  of  men,  but  of 
which  the  cultivation  is  the  more  especial  duty  of  all  who  call 
themselves  philosophers."  This  is  a  weighty  remark ;  not, 
perhaps,  singularly  recondite,  but,  beacon-like,  giving  warning 
of  much,  and  peculiarly  applicable  to  the  present  time.  Be- 
hind us  now  we  see  a  long  roll  of  ages ;  as  we  look  backward 
over  the  path  of  mankind,  we  discern  opinions  of  all  sorts 
maintained  by  men  of  all  orders  of  talent;  from  belief  in 
transubstantiation  to  belief  in  nothing,  all  beliefs  have  had 
their  ahlc  advocates.  This  prospect  can  not  again  be  darkened, 
this  fact  can  no  longer  be  disguised :  while  newspapers,  and 
mechanic  institutes,  and  even  ragged  schools  exist,  men  will 
know  that  the  mode  of  their  parish,  of  their  country,  of  their 
generation,  is  not  the  only  conceivable  mode.     Even  the  body 


292     A  TEW  WORDS  OF  MODERN  DOUBT. 

of  the  people  can  not  £igo.in,  save  by  an  iron  despotism,  be 
"brought  to  any  such  state  as  subsisted  in  ages  long  gone  by. 
It  is  therefore  nothing  wonderful,  that  a  common  phenomenon 
of  the  day  is  doubt. 

In  considering  the  aspects  of  the  time,  one  can  not  fail  to  bo 
struck  with  the  singular  spectacles  which  arise  out  of  this 
characteristic.  We  have  been  forcibly  reminded,  in  reflecting 
on  certain  of  these,  of  a  certain  Arabian  tale.  We  find  there 
recorded  the  fate  of  a  vessel,  whose  pilot  unfortunately  steered 
her  into  the  too  close  vicinity  of  a  magnetic  mountain.  The 
nails  were  all  attracted,  the  planks  fell  asunder,  and  total 
wreck  ensued.  It  is  no  uncomm.on  thing  at  present,  to  see  a 
man  sailing  in  the  vessel  of  his  belief  and  appearing  to  do  well 
enough.  But  he  nears  some  new  system  of  philosophic  or 
theological  thought,  or  comes  within  the  influence  of  some  man 
of  overwhelming  powers.  This  is  the  magnetic  mountain.  It 
at  once  draws  out  the  connecting  and  riveting  points  of  his 
fiiith,  and  his  whole  ship,  himself  sprawling  among  the  severed 
timbers,  lies  scattered  w^ide  on  the  tossing  sea.  But  he  man- 
ages to  gather  together  the  floating  wreck,  he  repairs  his  be- 
lief, and  again  sets  sail :  Lo  !  another  magnetic  mountain  ;  the 
nails  are  again  flying;  again  he  lies  discomfited  among  waves 
and  mere  confused  planks.  His  courage  does  not  quite  fail, 
however;  yet  again  he  gets  piece  to  piece,  and,  under  a  new 
phase,  once  more  sets  forth :  and  so  it  proceeds,  mountain  after 
mountain,  and  phase  after  phase,  the  whole  voyage  being  taken 
up  either  in  refitting,  or  in  proclaiming  that  now  at  last  a 
balmy  and  salubrious  region  has  been  entered,  that  all  ships 
ought  to  sail  on  this  tack,  and  that  the  last  magnetic  mountain 
(the  head  of  the  next  just  becoming  visible  in  the  horizon)  is 
positively  the  last  in  this  world. 

Now  we  think  it  can  not  be  denied  that  there  is  an  unwonted 


A  FEW  WORDS  ON  MODERN  DOUBT.      293 

amount  of  intellectual  foppishness  at  present  extant ;  the  old 
Byronic  fop,  who  sneered  with  the  precise  sneer  supposed  to 
C'lrl  the  lip  of  the  Cliildc,  and  looked  as  if  his  friends  ought  to 
keep  the  knives  well  out  of  his  way,  has  given  place  to  the 
Carlylian  dapperling.  This  one  "  looks  under  the  show  of 
things,"  finds  the  age  hopelessly  decadent,  deals  out  critical 
damnation  on  every  writer  of  the  day  save  Carlyle  and  Thack- 
eray, and  wishes  his  "  great  soul "  had  taken  form  in  some  he- 
roic old  age,  when  men  really  believed,  and  had  sense  enough 
left  to  worship  heroes  like  him.  Mr.  Carlyle  is  unquestionably 
a  mountain,  but  never  did  mountain  bring  forth  so  large  a 
progeny  of  mice. 

True,  however,  as  all  this  is,  it  were  a  fatal  error  to  con- 
found with  mere  foppery  the  honest  and  earnest  doubt  which 
we  meet  with.  Our  time  here  demands  a  faithful  valor  be- 
yond that  of  chivalry. 

"  There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doul  t, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds." 

There  may,  in  our  quiet  domestic  life,  arise  temptations  to 
mental  cowardice  as  severe  as  ever  prompted  a  soldier  to  quit 
the  field  under  some  cloud  of  dust,  or  on  some  plausible  pre- 
text :  there  may  be  suspicion  and  contempt  to  be  encountered 
as  biting  as  the  cold  steel,  before  which  the  clear  eye  scorned 
to  flinch :  there  may  be  endearments  as  tender  to  be  torn 
asunder  in  the  struggle  toward  internal  freedom  and  truth,  as 
ever  drew  a  manly  tear  from  the  strong  knight  who  bade 
adieu  to  his  lady-love  on  his  way  to  Palestine.  There  may  be 
a  deliberate  abandonment,  for  the  sake  of  a  pure  conscience, 
and  to  preserve  an  unpolluted  mentel  atmosphere,  of  respect 
long  accorded,  of  esteem  for  kindness  and  fliithfulness  of  heart, 
or  deference,  perhaps  still  dearer,  to  power  of  intellect,  of  sym- 


294  A     FEW     WORDS     ON     MODERN     DOUBT. 

pathetic  jo}  s  from  truth  shared  and  loved  in  common,  of  hopes 
and  expectations  whose  extinguishing  looks  like  quenching  the 
last  fire  in  a  cold  wintery  day.  And,  we  say,  this  deliberate 
laying  of  the  joys  of  earth  on  the  altar  of  truth  and  conscience, 
may  cause  severer  pangs  than  were  ever  felt  by  the  true  war- 
rior, who  would  still  march  on  though  his  companions  fell  stiff 
by  the  wayside,  or  continue  to  face  the  foe  when  he  stood  or 
ground  slippery  with  the  blood  that  was  dear  to  him.  The 
loneliness  one  feels  when  afar  from  the  habitations  of  men,  on 
the  ocean  or  in  the  desert,  is,  we  are  assured,  but  a  faint  em- 
blem of  that  dread  feeling  of  sad  and  ghastly  solitude  which 
many  a  noble  soul  has  experienced,  when  compelled  by  bests 
inaudible  to  his  fellov/-men,  to  pass  forth  alone  into  new  re- 
gions of  thought  and  belief.  The  former  solitude  was  but  rel- 
ative, and  scarcely  real :  the  hearts  that  loved  him  might  be 
distant,  but  in  his  hand  were  invisible  threads  of  gold  which 
linked  them  still  to  his  ;  the  smiles  of  welcome  were  waiting 
at  the  door  of  home,  the  accents  of  kindness,  tremulous  through 
excess  of  joy,  would  ring  clear  whenever  his  foot  was  heard  on 
the  threshold ;  nay,  by  a  thousand  acts  of  nature's  gentle  magic, 
memory  and  imagination  could  make  those  smiles  and  accents 
present,  to  soothe  his  toil  with  encouragement,  and  fill  with 
music  the  hot  air  around  him :  but  here  those  golden  chains 
themselves  had  been  strained  or  riven,  those  smiles  themselves 
had  faded  ;  instead  of  a  few  miles  of  earth,  there  had  yawned 
between  him  and  the  best  riches  of  his  heart  an  impassable 
chasm,  and  for  consolation  he  could  have  no  thought  of  an 
earthly  home,  but  must  listen  only  to  the  voice  within,  or  look 
up  to  a  Father  who  was  in  heaven. 

"  Feebly  must  they  have  felt 
Who,  in  old  time,  attired  with  snakes  and  whips 
The  revengeful  Furies.     Beautiful  regards 


A  FEW  WORDS  ON  MODERN  DOUBT.     295 

Wore  t  irn'J  on  mc — the  face  of  her  I  loved, 
The  Wife  and  Mother  pitifully  fixing 
Tender  reproaches,  insupportable!" 

Such  thoughts  should  make  men  at  once  careful  and  le- 
niei\t  in  judging  of  those  who  differ  from  them  and  the  ma- 
jority,  and  especially  it  should  avert  all  asperity  from  the 
mode  of  dealing  with  young  men,  who  have  been  led  to  doubt, 
it  may  be  through  earnestness,  and  who  have  struggled  to  re- 
tain their  footing,  it  may  be  almost  in  despair. 

We  are  not  now  to  enter  on  any  discussion  of  this  wide  sub- 
ject :  we  present  merely  one  or  two  preliminary  but  we  think 
vitally  important  considerations. 

First  of  all,  let  it  be  fully  and  boldly  admitted,  what  doubt 
really  is  and  occasions ;  we  mean  in  its  bearing  upon  life  and 
action.  Blanco  Whites  and  John  Sterlings  may  be  admirable 
and  may  deserve  commendation  in  many  ways,  or  they  may 
not ;  but,  if  such  are  to  be  taken  as  specimens  of  widely-ex- 
tended classes,  if  men  are  more  and  more  to  resemble  these, 
it  is  at  least  plain  that  work  is  no  longer  to  be  got  done  in 
this  world.  If  our  modern  enlightenment  is  merely  to  pro- 
duce a  vast  swarm  of  doubters,  if  every  year  and  decade,  with 
its  harvest  of  systems  and  proposals,  furnishes  simply  an  ad- 
dition of  labor  to  the  poor  man  of  next  generation,  who  would 
attain  stable  belief,  our  outlook  for  the  future  is  somewhat 
startling  ;  it  is  perfectly  manifest,  that  the  children  of  the  He- 
brews, the  Romans,  and  the  Puritans,  must  become  moon- 
struck gazers  rather  than  faithful  workers,  that  the  words  of 
the  poet  must  reach  a  positive  and  ghastly  fulfillment,  and 
Earth  become  the  Bedlam  of  the  universe. 

But  next,  and  summarily,  we  lay  it  down  as  an  axiom,  that 
even  this  consideration  must  not  be  used  as  an  argument  that 
doubt  should  be  stifled,  and  fiilsehood  or  partial  falsehood, 


296     A  FEW  WORDS  ON  MODERN  DOUBT. 

either  real  or  suspected,  contentedly  accepted  in  its  stead. 
Sad  as  the  above  spectacle  may  be,  we  must  courageously  be- 
hold it ;  the  searching,  struggling,  groping  attitude  is  not  de- 
feat, but  the  best  proof  of  worthiness  of  victory  ;  the  eye  in 
which  is  doubt  will  swim  irresolute,  the  arm  of  the  doubter 
will  hang  powerless,  but  it  is  only  the  calmness  of  truth 
that  must  steady  the  one,  and  the  energy  of  truth  that  must 
nerve  the  other ;  falsehood  is  perfect  blindness  and  perfect 
death. 

If  we  might  venture  on  a  suggestion  as  to  a  speedy  method 
of  reaching  a  firm  and  stable  position,  and  putting  an  end, 
either  in  one  way  or  another  to  this  paralyzing  and  afflicting 
doubt,  it  would  be  to  this  effect :  That  attention  should  be 
turned  specially  in  two  directions  ;  to  determine  the  great  fun- 
damental points  of  belief,  and  to  distinguish  between  what  are 
mere  difficulties  and  what  are  positive  proofs  or  disproofs.  It 
has  often  been  remarked  how  near  to  each  other  in  their  orig- 
inal fountains  are  the  streams  of  belief;  lilic  rivers,  whose 
sources  are  seen  by  one  poised  condor  on  the  topmost  ridge 
of  the  Andes,  and  whose  mouths  are  divided  by  a  continent. 
Thus  philosophic  faith  and  philosophic  skepticism,  wide  apart 
as  flow  their  respective  streams,  yet  enter  their  several  chan- 
nels according  to  the  answer,  affirmative  or  negative,  given  to 
the  simple  question.  Can  the  human  consciousness  be  trusted  ? 
And  there  are  not  a  few  such  determining  questions,  whose 
answer  may  at  the  outset  confirm  religious  belief,  or  sum- 
marily dismiss  it;  of  such  sort  the  following  appear  to  us  to 
be : — Whether,  on  the  whole,  the  phenomenon  presented  by 
Paul  can  be  accounted  for,  save  on  the  hypothesis  of  the  su- 
pernatural origin  of  Christianity  1  Whether,  fairly  applied  to, 
history  can  take  us  to  Judea  and  set  us  among  the  auditors  of 
Christ,  and  whether,  then.  He  can  be  deliberately  pronounced 


A     FEW    "VrORDS     ON    MODERN     DOUBT.  297 

a  deceiver  or  deceived  1  Whether  all  the  religions  of  men 
have  been  mere  pitiable  delusions,  or  are  to  be  accounted  for 
as  pointing  toward  one  true  religion  and  doing  it  honor,  as 
bending,  unconsciously,  indeed,  and  as  if  with  the  vague  uncer- 
tain motions  of  a  dream,  yet  manifestly  bending,  around  its 
greater  light  ?  Whether  human  history  can  furnish  a  precise 
or  approximate  analogue  to  the  combination  of  New  Testament 
morality  and  New  Testament  assertion  of  the  exercise  of  su- 
pernatural power,  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  one  is  a  hypo- 
critic  disguise  and  the  other  a  pestilent  lie,  or  that  the  one  is 
the  maundering  of  weakness  and  the  other  the  dream  of  fanati- 
cism 1 

Such  questions  could  be  indefinitely  multiplied,  and  many 
might  be  found  far  better  adapted  to  the  end  than  these. 
Such  have  the  advantage  of  bringing  the  matter  to  a  speedy 
issue.  Be  their  answer  positive  or  negative,  the  power  of 
doubt  to  fetter  action  is  broken  ;  all  succeeding  questions  are 
of  secondary  moment.  And  it  will  commend  itself,  as  a  rea- 
sonable and  manly  mode  of  procedure,  that  when  once  such 
definite  answer  has  been  given,  minor  questions  be  placed  in 
the  rank  of  mere  difliculties,  able  no  longer  to  touch  the 
citadel  of  the  soul.  If  I  can  believe  that  the  Saviour  willfully 
deceived  his  disciples,  the  serenity  of  my  unbelief  will  be 
troubled  by  no  difficulty,  serious  as  in  itself  it  might  be,  in 
accounting  for  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  If  I  believe  that 
Jesus  raised  the  dead  in  Palestine,  I  will  feel  that  my  foot  is 
on  a  rock,  around  which  I  can  behold  a  shattering  universe 
unmoved,  and  from  which  I  can  calmly  look  until  all  shadows 
vanish,  and  every  cloud  of  difficulty,  looked  upon  by  the  morn- 
ing light,  rest  radiant  in  a  serene  sky,  visible  only  by  its  power 
to  absorb  the  sunbeams. 

And  there  is  one  point  never  to  be  forgotten  ;  that,  beneath 


298      A  FEW  WORDS  ON  MODERN  DOUBT. 

all  doubC;  there  musi':  in  every  case  continue  to  lie  a  certain 
immovable  and  unquestioned  foundation,  or  all  is  lost.  There 
are  two  perils,  each  of  fatal  tendency,  which  beset  the  youthful 
inquirer  on  the  way  to  truth  ;  perils  against  which  it  is  no  pre- 
judging of  the  case  on  our  part  to  warn  him,  since  they  affect, 
not  the  attainment  of  any  positive  creed,  or  modification  of  a 
creed,  but  the  very  ability  and  will  to  search  for  such,  the 
very  life  of  the  soul. 

The  first  peril,  thus  absolutely  ruinous  in  its  action,  is  that 
of  sensuality ;  we  are  assured  it  is  real  and  fearful.  The 
young  man  has  long  ago  left  the  kindly  shore  of  his  early  be- 
lief, it  may  be  the  genial  smile  of  his  native  home,  and  em- 
barked on  a  wild  and  apparently  endless  voyage.  The  sky 
seems  ever  to  grow  blacker,  the  surges  more  wrathful,  the 
howl  of  the  bitter  blast  more  melancholy  and  foreboding  :  he 
set  out  to  reach  the  Happy  Isles,  full  of  noble  hope  and  lofty 
aspiration  ;  but  never  has  he  at  all  approached  them  ;  never, 
through  the  darkness  and  temj)est,  was  seen  the  calm  gleam 
of  their  resting  haven,  the  welcoming  smile  of  their  unfading 
gardens ;  and  now  his  heart  sickens  in  his  breast,  with  un- 
solaced  yearning,  with  hope  long  deferred,  in  the  scowl  of  that 
black  negation  which  seems  to  press  down  on  him  from  the 
whole  starless  sky  :  then  there  steals  over  the  ocean  a  sweet, 
a  witching  melody,  and  he  sees  a  soft  light  through  the  storm 
in  the  distance,  streaming  gently  as  from  a  dwelling  of  perfect 
peace ;  lifting  his  eyes,  he  beholds  the  Syren  songstress,  with 
alluring  smile,  sitting  at  the  door  of  her  enchanted  cave,  bar- 
ing her  voluptuous  bosom,  offering  the  spiced  and  mantling 
draught.  Here,  at  least,  is  certainty.  For  the  excitement  of 
passion  will  be  exchanged  the  misery  of  disappointing  thought, 
for  the  living  raptures  of  pleasure,  the  untsubstantial  and  hard- 
won  joys  of  truth.     Why  in  toil  and  anguish  seek  an  inherit- 


A  FEW  WORDS  ON  MODERN  DOUBT.     299 

ance  for  the  soul  ?  "Why  look  out  hito  immensity,  forward  to 
eternity  ?  We  are  on  the  earth,  why  not  be  altogether  of 
the  earth  ?  Much  may  deceive,  but  passion  at  least  is  real. 
The  temptation  is  strong,  and,  we  fear,  often  prevailing  ;  and 
when  it  does  prevail,  it  can  be  only  by  a  convulsive  effort  that 
the  life  of  the  soul  is  saved.  For  here  there  could  be  no 
doubt  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  temptress  ;  the  invitation  was 
clear  and  unmistakable  :  Turn  from  spirit  to  sense,  leave  faith 
for  sight,  bow  down  at  the  shrine  of  Belial,  curse  God  and  die 
to  all  nobleness.  While  the  mental  atmosphere  is  pure,  while 
the  darkness  is  only  without,  while  the  "  red  lightnings  of  re- 
morse" do  not  flash  within,  and  self-contempt  is  not  added  to 
that  of  others,  there  is  good  hope  that  the  haven  of  a  believing 
working  manhood  may  be  gained  ;  but  from  the  rocks  of  the 
Syrens  who  ever  returned  1 

The  second  peril  is  not  the  surrender  to  sensualism,  but  is 
perhaps  still  more  desperate ;  the  abandonment  of  earnestness, 
the  lapse  into  a  harmless  but  purposeless  skepticism.  Concern- 
ing much  a  man  may  question,  but  of  this  he  must  not  enter- 
tain any  doubt ;  that  the  universe  is  not  a  dream,  a  phantas- 
magoria, an  aimless,  incomprehensible  nothmg,  but  a  reality. 
He  shall  always  believe  that,  whatever  his  uncertainty,  truth 
is  immovable  and  immortal.  There  is  thus  a  refuge  for  faith 
in  the  wildest  discord  of  doubt ;  and  the  very  inability  of  the 
earnest  mind  to  reach  a  definite  and  particular  belief  may  ren- 
der the  more  emphatic  and  even  heroic  an  unwavering  con- 
Idence  in  the  existence  of  truth,  in  the  verity  of  Gcd. 

"  Oh  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
WiU  be  the  final  goal  of  ill, 
To  pangs  of  nature,  sins  of  will. 
Defects  of  doubt,  and  taints  of  blood: 


300  A    FEW    "WORDS     ON    MODERN     DOUBT. 

"That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet ; 
That  net  one  life  shall  be  destroy'd, 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void, 
"When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete ; 

"That  not  a  worm  is  cloven  in  vain ; 
That  not  a  moth  with  vain  desire 
Is  shrivell'd  in  a  fruitless  fire, 
Or  but  subserves  another's  gain." 

Once  this  faith  is  lost ;  once  a  man  comes  to  question 
whether  there  is  an  earnest  purpose  in  this  universe  at  all ; 
when  it  is  no  longer  of  his  own  path  or  his  own  powers  of 
navigation  that  he  doubts,  but  of  the  very  existence  of  a  celestial 
vault  above  those  clouds,  with  its  immovable  lights  burning 
round  the  throne  of  God ;  then  he  is  in  an  evil  case.  Here, 
too,  he  finds  rest ;  but  it  is  only  a  degree  nobler  than  the  rest 
of  sensualism  ;  it  is  the  rest  of  an  easy,  careless,  blunt  indiffer- 
ence, an  acceptation  of  the  good  things  of  the  day,  a  consent 
not  to  push  sternly  forward  in  an  undeviating  path,  but  lightly 
and  laughingly  to  "  gyrate,"  like  M.  Maurepas.  Is  it  uncom- 
mon, either  in  literature  or  in  society,  to  observe  the  working 
of  such  a  spirit  as  this  ?  Does  there  not  subsist  in  our  age  a 
certain  skepticism,  good-humored  from  its  very  completeness, 
and  extremely  clever  and  gentlemany,  which  would  laughingly 
aim  its  darts  at  the  very  heart  of  truth  "?  All  loftiness  of 
emotion,  all  earnest  prizing  of  spiritual  belief,  is  genially  ban- 
tered aside.  Truth  may  be  very  good,  but  its  pursuit  is  so 
tantalizing  ;  one  gets  on  to  satisfaction  without  troubling  him- 
self about  profound  faith ;  mtensity  of  feeling  is  a  sign  of 
youth,  or  affectation,  or  feeble  enthusiasm ;  the  nil  admirari 
mood,  the  abnegation  of  all  reverence  and  wonder,  befits  the 
smart  member  of  polite  society ;  honesty  consists  in  making 
no  pretense  to  earnestness.     And  then  wit  survives  ;  on  every 


A  FEW  WORDS  ON  MODERN  DOUBT.      301 

thing  there  Ciin  "be  hung  a  jest ;  from  the  star  to  the  grass 
blade,  all  Ih'mgs  can  be  covered  with  the  flickering  light  of 
clever  and  kindly  banter.  It  is  by  no  means  unpleasant  to 
meet  a  disciple  of  this  school ;  he  is  sure  to  be  witty,  cheery, 
sparkling,  devoid  of  all  pretense,  blithe  as  a  canary.  No  less 
exhilarating  is  the  same  spirit  when  breathed  from  the  page  of 
literature.  Sydney  Smith  was  perhaps  its  most  signal  embodi- 
ment ;  allied  with  genius  still  more  rare  and  delicate,  we  are 
sensible  of  its  subtle  enchantment  in  the  softly  glowing  para- 
graphs of  Eothen.  Yet  this  whole  phenomenon  is  one  of  un- 
questionable sadness  ;  perhaps  few  things  could  be  more  melan- 
choly. Fichte  and  Carlyle  proclaim  rightly  that  there  is  a 
grandeur  in  noble  sorrow  ;  it  is  ill  with  him  who  is  incapable 
of  spiritual  anguish,  even  of  lofty  despair.  That  very  pain  is, 
we  repeat,  a  proof  of  devotion  to  truth ;  as  the  keenness  of 
the  slighted  lover's  distress  tests  the  depth  of  his  affection. 
Better  bow  before  a  vailed  Isis  than  care  not  whether  the  Di- 
vine can  be  known  at  all !  This  is  the  second  peril,  and  many 
are  there  in  our  day,  whose  best  existence,  whose  soul's  life, 
is  by  it  put  in  jeopardy. 

But  for  him  who  doubts  sincerely,  and  will  nowise  fail  from 
his  faith  in  truth  itself,  there  may  be  ordained  the  breaking 
forth  of  a  great  glory  of  deliverance  and  of  dawn.  True  it  is, 
his  doubt  is  to  be  hated,  and  he  can  never  fairly  take  the  road  un- 
til it  is  no  more.  But  the  brightness  of  the  morning  may  be 
proportioned  to  the  length  and  the  darkness  of  the  night.  The 
overwearied  dove  long  winged  its  aimless  way,  over  an  earth 
that  was  but  one  wide  waste  of  waters,  under  a  streaming  and 
iJarkened  sky ;  and  now  its  tired  pinions  flapped  heavily,  the 
heart  within  had  almost  failed,  the  last  ray  of  hope  was  fading 
from  the  eye  ;  but  even  then  the  olive  twig  emerged,  and  from 
a  rift  in  the  thick  cloud  a  beam  of  light  fell  on   the   fainting 


302  A     FEW    WORDS    ON    MODERN    DOUBT. 

breast,  and  gradually  the  earth  again  un vailed  her  face,  and  the 
triumphant  embrace  of  the  returning  light  kindled  a  glory 
which  eclipsed  all  other  dawns.     Need  we  apply  the  parable  1 


In  the  following  chapters  of  this  Book,  we  shall,  amid  much 
else,  have  occasion  to  note  several  of  the  phases  of  Modern 
Doubt,  and  to  observe  whether  and  how  the  Christian  life  can 
spring  amid  it,  triumph  over  it,  or  stand  unassailed  by  it. 


CHAPTER    II 


JOHN     FOSTER, 


Joni?  Foster,  peasant  in  the  west  of  Yorkshire,  and  father 
of  the  subject  of  these  paragraphs,  was  one  of  those  undoubt- 
ing  Christians,  whose  lives,  unnoticed  by  the  world  and  uncon- 
sciously to  themselves,  are  yet  faithful  transcripts  from  apos- 
tolic or  patriarchal  times.  lie  no  more  questioned  the  stabil- 
ity of  that  path  on  which  he  went  toward  eternity,  than  he 
questioned  the  firmness  of  the  ground  along  which,  with  solid 
measured  tread,  he  walked  to  his  daily  toil.  For  twenty 
years  before  his  death,  he  prayed,  every  year,  that  God,  if  it 
seemed  good  to  Him,  would  terminate  his  earthly  career. 
And  this  strength  of  character  was  finely  shaded  by  a  tenden- 
cy toward  reflection,  a  love  of  meditation  and  retirement. 
There  was  a  lonely  spot  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Hebden, 
whither  he  used  to  retire  in  meditative  hours,  and  which  be- 
came known  as  Foster's  cave.  His  wife  Ann  was  the  fitting 
spouse  of  such  a  husband.  Her  piety  was  of  the  same  order 
as  his  ;  her  decision  still  more  conspicuous.  One  day,  before 
their  marriage,  Mr.  Foster  happened,  in  her  presence,  to  be  in 
a  desponding  mood.  "  I  can  not,"  he  said,  "  keep  a  wife." — 
"Then  I  will  work  and  keep  my  husband,"  rejoined  Ann. 
Prudence  would  join  with  love  in  recommending  such  a 
union. 

On  the  17th  of  September,  1770,  their  son  John  was  born. 


304  JOHN     FOSTER. 

It  soon  became  evident  that  the  child  inherited,  more  or 
less,  the  disposition  of  either  parent.  He  was  a  quiet,  retiring 
boy,  who  loved  to  separate  himself  from  the  boisterous  circle 
of  youthful  mirth,  and  commune  with  his  own  heart  alone ; 
his  sympathies  were  not  diffusive,  his  likings  were  few,  we 
hear  but  of  one  friend  of  his  own  age ;  he  lacked  the  glad 
buoyancy  of  early  youth,  and  soon  learned  to  wander  musing 
by  the  brook  side,  or  in  the  lonely  wood.  In  this  we  recog- 
nize the  son  of  that  John  Foster  who  used  to  meditate  and  to 
pray  in  the  cave  beside  the  murmuring  Hebden.  He  was, 
however,  nowise  destitute  of  acute  feelings  or  strong  energies ; 
here  he  took  after  his  other  parent.  When  he  did  love  or 
hate,  he  did  either  well. 

But  it  soon  became  manifest  that  he  possessed  elements  of 
character  distinctively  his  own.  He  was  not  merely  shy  and 
silent,  heedless  of  boyish  sports ;  he  was  not  only  an  observ- 
ant, sagacious,  precociously  wise,  and  as  neighbors  said,  "  old- 
fashioned"  little  man :  he  was  conscious,  besides,  of  feelings 
with  which  no  sympathy  was  to  be  expected  from  any  one,  of 
pensive  yearnings,  and  half-defined  longings,  which  shut  him 
by  the  barrier  of  a  strong  individuality  fi^om  the  throng.  His 
sensibilities — we  mean  his  unselfish  and  kindly  sensibilities — 
were  tender  to  a  degree  very  rare  in  boyhood ;  he  "  abhorred 
spiders  for  killing  flies,  and  abominated  butchers ;"  his  imag- 
ination tyrannized  over  him,  painting  to  his  eye  the  scene  of 
torture,  or  the  skeleton,  or  the  apparition,  until  he  shrunk  in 
loathing  and  terror  from  their  ghastly  distinctness.  This  deli- 
cate sensibility,  manifesting  itself  in  a  fellow-feeling  with  every 
being  that  did  or  could  suffer  pain,  and  this  eye-to-eye  clear- 
ness of  imaginative  vision,  were  determinmg  elements  in  his 
developed  character. 

He  wag  about  fourteen  years  of  age,  when  he  heard  what  we 


JOHN     FOSTER.  305 

must  regard  as  the  first  direct  monition  from  Heaven,  the  first 
call  to  pause  and  consider.  About  that  time,  he  ventured  so 
far  to  unbosom  himself  to  his  friend  Henry  Ilorsfall,  as  to  let 
him  know  that  the  peace  of  his  heart  had  been  disturbed,  and 
that  it  was  only  by  taking  to  himself  as  a  garment  the  robe  of 
Christ's  righteousness,  that  he  could  regain  calmness  of  mind. 
Tliis  was  unquestionably  the  turning-point  of  his  life,  the  oc- 
casion of  his  first  and  irrevocably  determining  to  enlist  in  the 
army  of  light.  A  long  period  elapsed  ere  his  whole  system  of 
belief  evolved  itself,  and  many  a  change  passed  over  his  spirit 
before  he  finally  reached  a  station  in  which  he  could  calmly  feel 
and  act,  unshackled  by  fear  and  unshaken  by  doubt ;  but  he 
had  taken  the  step  of  separation,  he  had  lifted  his  eye  from 
earth  to  heaven,  and  whatever  change — of  circumstance,  of 
opinion,  of  feeling — may  afterward  have  taken  place — however 
he  may  have  doubted,  whithersoever  he  may  have  wandered — 
we  can  firmly  say,  that  this  direction  was  never  altered. 

When  he  attained  his  seventeenth  year,  he  became  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Baptist  congregation  at  Hebden  Bridge,  and  about 
the  same  time  resolved  to  dedicate  himself  to  the  Clu-istian 
ministry.  For  three  years,  he  devoted  himself  to  theological 
and  general  study  in  Brearley  Hall,  an  educational  institute  in 
the  neighborhood.  While  here,  he  continued,  as  in  his  early 
boyhood,  to  lend  his  parents  occasional  assistance  in  their 
labors  at  the  loom. 

He  now  applied  himself  to  the  acquisition  of  knowledge 
with  intense  earnestness.  For  whole  nights  he  read  and  med- 
itated, choosing  as  his  retreat  on  such  occasions  a  grove  in  Dr. 
Fawcett's  garden.  His  mind  was  tardy  in  its  operations. 
He  performed  his  scholastic  exercises  with  extreme  slowness. 
But  his  efforts  were  unremitting  and  determined ;  and  we 
doubt  not  it  was  here  that  he  acquired  much  of  that  extensive, 


306  JOHN     FOSTER. 

though  somewhcat  miscellaneous  information,  of  which  his 
works  give  ample  evidence.  Here,  too,  he  was  enabled  to  in- 
dulge his  love  of  the  various  aspects  of  nature.  It  was  his  re- 
creation to  ramble  in  the  neighboring  glens  and  woodlands. 
On  one  occasion  he  wandered  for  a  whole  night  with  a  friend 
under  the  open  sky,  that  he  might  note  the  varying  features 
of  twilight,  of  darkness,  and  especially  of  dawn.  He  displayed 
at  an  early  period,  what  he  continued  to  evince  through  life,  a 
deep  and  genuine  love  of  nature.  In  early  days  it  led  him  to 
wander  in  solitary  ways,  while  other  boys  were  at  sport,  and 
in  after  years  it  caused  him  to  speak  of  those  unacquainted 
with  the  sympathetic  emotions  of  a  deep  affection  for  nature 
as  seeming  to  want  a  sense.  He  loved  every  aspect  of  sky 
and  earth,  but  the  naturally  serious  cast  of  his  mind  was 
evinced  by  his  preference  of  the  great  and  gloomy.  The 
glories  of  the  moon  streaming  over  the  forest  and  showing  the 
dim  crag  with  its  giant  shadow  in  the  slumbering  lake,  the 
slow  march  of  the  laden  clouds  across  the  sky,  the  cleft  cloud, 
whose  jagged  edges  were  fringed  with  white  fire,  and  from 
whose  caverns  issued  the  laugh  of  the  thunder  ; — these  fitted 
best  his  somber  yet  vivid  imagination,  and  yielded  him  the 
pleasure  of  a  stern  enchantment.  But  he  had  also  a  look  of 
sympathy  and  love  for  more  delicate  and  minute  beauties. 
He  would  watch  lovingly  the  kindling  smile  of  nature  as 
Spring  awoke  and  opened  the  gates  of  Summer;  he  heard  with 
a  thrill  of  joy  the  note  of  the  bird,  and  often  speaks  of  the  sky- 
people,  the  inhabitants  of  the  summer  sunbeams,  that  were 
such  favorites  with  Richter.  Yet  Foster's  love  of  nature  was 
perhaps  never  the  passionate  love  of  the  poet,  and  the  flow 
and  freshness  of  its  early  manifestations  were  soon  impaired 
by  a  habit  of  schooled  and  conscious  observation.  He  exer- 
cised a  careful  supervision  over  his  thoughts  and  impressions, 


JOHN     FOSTER.  307 

striving  to  subject  all  the  operations  of  his  intellect  to  a  "  mili- 
tary discipline."  lie  learned  to  observe  nature  with  a  certain 
constrained  accuracy,  to  jot  down  his  various  impressions  of 
her  beauty,  to  gather  analogies,  similes,  and  so  on :  by  which 
method,  it  appears,  coy  nature  will  not  be  known.  Foster 
was  in  all  things  too  self-conscious.  He  would  have  the  flower 
up  to  see  how  its  roots  were  thriving,  he  would  lay  out  his 
mind  like  a  Dutch  garden,  all  trimmed,  and  squared,  and  or- 
dered. This  is  an  important  element  in  his  character.  It  im- 
peded that  easy  natural  flow  of  thought  and  diction,  it  dulled 
that  sportive  buoyancy  of  soul,  which  indicate,  as  they  spring 
from,  an  energy  working  much  by  spontaneity  and  impulse, 
a  knowledge  that  has  been  naturally  matured,  and  is  ever  kept 
fresh  and  verdant.  We  meet  in  his  works  with  glimpses  of 
insight  into  the  vast  region  of  our  unconscious  influences  ;  but 
he  seems  to  have  considered  it  his  duty  to  order  every  move- 
ment of  his  own  mind  with  an  algebraic  exactness ;  he  never 
fairly  embraced  and  submitted  to  the  beautiful  and  important 
truth,  that  the  noblest  education  is  that  of  sympathy,  when, 
with  viewless  hand,  she  throws  open  the  gates  of  the  soul, 
that  the  forms  of  beauty  and  the  light  of  truth  may  silently 
enter  in. 

We  have  already  noted  the  acuteness  of  Foster's  sensibili- 
ties :  we  must  say  another  word  on  the  subject  ere  passing  on. 
In  no  way  is  he  more  frequently  or  dogmatically  characterized 
than  by  the  word  misanthrope.  This  word,  we  maintain,  is  an 
absolute  misapplication.  We  are  confident  we  can  prove  that, 
from  his  earliest  to  his  latest  years,  his  heart  was  tenderly, 
delicately  kind.  His  sensibilities  were  not  less,  but  more 
acute  than  those  of  his  fellow-men. 

At  first  glance  he  appeared  cold.  It  was  natural  that  he 
should ;  the  circumstances  of  his  boyhood,  and  perhaps  a  con- 


308  JOHN     FOSTER. 

stitutional  tendency,  determined  it  so.  He  had  no  very  early 
associates :  his  parents  were  far  advanced  in  life,  and  did  nothing 
to  encourage  the  healthful  sprightliness  of  chilhood ;  his  brother 
Thomas  was  too  much  younger  than  himself  to  be  his  play- 
mate ;  he  had  no  sister.  The  consequence  was,  that  he  grew 
up  externally  cold  and  self-involved.  On  his  sedate  and  pen- 
sive countenance  there  was  not  that  look  of  vivacious  geniality, 
that  flower-like  smiling,  which  is  nature's  appointed  expression 
and  emblem  of  kindness  of  heart.  He  possessed  no  advan- 
tages of  face  and  form,  nor  had  he  that  nameless  power  to 
attract  and  please  which  make  some  persons  universal 
favorites. 

Yet  we  are  assured  that  all  this  is  not  inconsistent  with  the 
fact  that  he  was  naturally  one  of  the  most  truly  lovable  of 
human  beings ;  noble,  gentle,  tenderly  affectionate.  His  na- 
ture, in  its  depths,  had  a  far  ti^uer  and  deeper  tenderness  than 
that  of  thousands  of  genial,  ever-smiling,  companionable  boys 
and  girls.  Our  proof  of  this  is  twofold  :  first,  we  have  direct 
manifestations  of  delicate  sensibility ;  and,  next,  we  find  this 
deep  kindness  necessary  to  solve,  and  absolutely  sufficient  for 
the  solution  of,  several  remarkably  prominent  leanings  and 
opinions  of  Foster. 

Among  the  direct  manifestations  of  genuine  and  tender  kind- 
ness, we  place  his  acute  feeling  of  the  sufferings  borne  by  the 
lower  animals ;  and  we  deem  this  an  infallible  pledge  of  kind- 
ness of  heart.  In  his  case,  it  was  a  deep,  constant,  and  consid- 
erate feeling.  We  point  also,  as  of  itself  sufficient  to  establish 
our  view,  to  that  sense  of  a  void  in  his  heart,  to  be  filled  only 
by  a  loved  and  loving  object,  which  breathes  in  his  early  let- 
ters. He  yearned  with  intense  desire  for  some  fully  sympa- 
thizing heart.  "  Cold  as  you  pronounce  me,"  he  exclaims,  in 
an  early  letter  ^  "  I  should  prefer  the  deep  animated  affection  of 


JOHN     FOSTER.  309 

one  person  whom  I  could  entirely  love,  to  all  the  tribute  fame 
could  levy  within  the  amplest  circuit  of  her  flight."  Again  : — 
"Something  seems  to  say,  Come,  come  away,  I  am  but  a 
gloomy  ghost  among  the  living  and  the  happy.  There  is  no 
need  of  me ;  I  shall  never  be  loved  as  I  wish  to  be  loved, 
and  as  I  could  love.  ...  I  ctm  never  become  deeply  im- 
portant to  any  one ;  and  the  unsuccessful  effort  to  become  so 
costs  too  much,  in  the  painful  sentiments  which  the  affections 
feel  when  they  return  mortified  from  the  fervent  attempt  to 
give  themselves  to  some  heart  which  would  welcome  them 
with  a  pathetic  warmth."  These  are  the  accents  of  a  really 
tender,  as  well  as  noble  nature ;  of  one  which  found  no  joy  in 
isolation,  although  met  by  disappointment  in  the  throng.  Fos- 
ter was  not  recognized  by  men  in  general  to  be  kind  ;  but  none 
ever  came  into  close  converse  with  him  who  did  not  know  it 
w^ell :  there  were  deep  and  pure  fountains  of  tenderness  in  his 
heart,  but  far  secluded  from  the  general  gaze.  There  are  wells 
among  the  calcined  ridges  of  the  Abyssinian  deserts,  known 
only  to  the  wild  gazelle,  and  for  which  even  the  wandering 
Arabs  seek  in  vain  for  ages.  Many  a  man  there  is  who  is 
deemed  hard  and  ungenial,  merely  because  his  kindness  is  hid- 
den deep  and  can  not  be  approached  by  ordinary  paths.  Fur- 
ther and  conclusive  proofs  of  Foster's  deep  kindliness  of  nature 
will  unfold  themselves  as  we  proceed. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-one,  he  left  Brearley  and  entered  the 
Baptist  College  in  Bristol.  His  application  here  must  have 
been  fitful.  "  Probably,"  he  says,  writing  to  a  friend  in  York- 
shire, "  there  never  was  a  more  indolent  student  at  this  or  any 
other  academy.  I  know  but  very  little  more  of  learning,  or 
any  thing  else,  than  when  I  left  you.  I  have  been  a  trifler  all 
my  life  to  this  hour."  But  his  mind  was  advancing.  His  let- 
ters testify  to  strong  moral  earnestness,  to  a  stern  and  manly 


310  JOHN     FOSTER. 

an.bition,  and  to  a  ripening  soundness  of  judgment.  His  eye 
was  ever  upward. 

He  left  the  Bristol  seminary  ere  he  completed  his  twenty- 
second  year.  His  education,  which,  so  far  as  school  and  col- 
lege were  concerned,  was  now  completed,  must  be  pronounced 
defective.  A  general  idea  of  the  classics  he  had,  but  nothing 
more ;  his  memory  seemed  not  to  have  been  trained  by  any 
systematic  discipline,  and  though  by  no  means  singularly  bad, 
was  yet  a  cause  of  complaint  to  him  through  life ;  his  reason- 
ing powers  do  not  appear  to  have  been  matured  by  any  course 
of  scientific  or  metaphysical  study,  and  all  his  works  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  fact.  By  miscellaneous  reading,  however,  he  had 
gained  a  large,  though  heterogeneous,  stock  of  knowledge ;  his 
intellect,  while  certainly  giving  no  clear  promise  that  it  would 
ever  be  of  that  embracing  kind  which  casts  its  generalizing 
glance  over  vast  tracts  of  history,  or  science,  or  philosophy, 
had  yet  proved  itself  possessed  of  great  natural  vigor  and 
shrewdness ;  beneath  all,  the  substratum  of  his  whole  mind, 
lay  a  radical  honesty,  a  penetrating  sense  of  reality.  This  last 
armed  him  with  an  almost  irresistible  power  to  pierce  disguises 
and  burn  up  moral  and  social  cobweb  and  filagree. 

Such,  in  meager  outline,  were  the  boyhood  and  youth  of 
Foster.  We  have  seen  him  under  the  influences  of  the  home 
and  the  school.  We  now  arrive  at  that  portion  of  his  history 
which  is  in  every  case  critical.  We  have  to  observe  him  as 
he  emerges  from  the  quite  region,  and  the  still  though  power- 
ful influences  which  have  hitherto  molded  his  character,  and 
enters  a  wider  and  more  perilous  sphere.  The  kindly  words 
and  glances  of  a  godly  father  and  mother,  the  friendly  admo- 
nitions of  Christian  instructors,  must  give  place  to  the  rude 
teaching  of  experience.  Till  now,  he  has  been  gently  and  ge- 
nially swayed  by  influences  exterior  to  himself;  he  has  gone  on 


JOHN     FOSTER.  311 

in  peace  and  trustfulness,  unconsciously  learJng  on  the  thought 
and  knowledge  of  others ;  not  to  any  measure  of  excess,  but 
rightly  and  blissfully,  he  has  hitherto  imbibed  the  impressions 
of  his  circle,  and  been  what  it  is  seemly  for  a  boy  and  a  youth 
to  be,  who  has  been  planted  by  God  in  a  Christian  family  and 
a  Christian  land.  But  now  his  instructors  are  to  be  the  many 
voices  of  contemporaneous  life;  his  keen  and  susceptible  mind 
is  to  be  brought  into  contact  with  the  agencies  that  ever  work 
in  the  great  world,  shaping  out  the  future ;  he  is  to  know  what 
men  in  their  various  grades  and  nations  are  doing  and  saying, 
that  he  may  manfully  determine  how  it  is  his  duty  to  speak 
and  to  act.  He  is  to  make  his  opinions  his  own,  by  taking 
them  down  for  a  time  from  those  niches  in  his  mind  where  the 
hand  of  a  parent  or  instructor  had  placed  them,  subjecting 
them  to  a  careful  and  earnest  scrutiny,  and  either  replacing 
them,  or  casting  them  awa}^  by  the  free  yet  resolute  hand  of 
individual  -svill.  He  is  to  know  the  agony  of  doubt.  He  is 
to  be  flung  from  youth's  pinnacles  of  hope,  till  he  almost  dis- 
cerns in  the  distance  the  dim  Lethe  of  despair.  He  is,  so  to 
speak,  to  serve  his  apprenticeship  to  the  time,  to  be  made  ac- 
quainted with  its  wants,  its  sicknesses,  its  conditions,  its  weap- 
ons, that  at  length  he  may  step  forth  a  skillful  and  well-approved 
workman,  knowing  what  it  is  foolish  or  boyish  to  attempt,  what 
it  is  imbecile  or  cowardly  to  shun. 

Tor  the  accomplishment  of  this  high  object,  a  period  of  ten 
years  will  not  be  too  long.  We  shall  take  a  broad  glance 
along  it,  specifying  a  few  of  its  more  prominent  influences, 
and  endeavoring,  in  his  own  words,  to  trace  his  progress 
through  it. 

It  will  be  necessary  for  us  in  the  outset  to  ask  what  were 
the  great  public  influences  of  the  time :  the  question  can  be 
briefly  answered. 


312  JOHN    FOSTER. 

We  have  already  had  occasion  to  refer  to  the  French  Revo- 
lution. It  is  unnecessary  to  do  more  now  than  to  note  the 
extent  of  its  influence.  Every  vein  and  artery  of  the  social 
system,  and  that  in  all  lands,  felfc  that  tremendous  throb  at  the 
heart  of  the  world.  Thrones,  senates,  churches  felt  it ;  nay, 
to  pursue  the  metaphor,  we  might  say  that  every  smallest 
capillary  to  which  blood  could  circulate  was  affected,  every 
unobserved  assemblage  where  eyes  caught  light  from  answer- 
ing glances,  every  college  coterie,  every  family  circle.  There 
was  not  a  noble  young  heart  in  Britain  but  beat  more  quickly 
at  the  great  tidings,  and  almost  universally  it  was  the  beating 
of  exultant  sympathy.  The  revolutionary  fire  went  burning 
and  blasting,  and  the  eyes  of  the  young  kindled  into  joy  and 
hope.  "  It  is,"  such  was  the  universal  shout,  "  the  breaking 
of  the  dawn  ;  the  mists  are  retiring  before  it ;  nothing  but 
mist  is  dissipated ;  presently  the  wide  landscape,  in  a  glory 
and  beauty  as  of  calm  and  bounteous  summer,  will  spread 
away  to  our  dazzled  eyes  toward  the  horizon  of  the  future." 
They  did  not  reflect  that  the  path  of  fire  is  over  a  soil  left 
blackened  and  sterile,  where  only  the  charred  skeletons  of  the 
once  proud  forest  remain,  and  that  long  years  revolve  ere 
nature  kindly  mantles  it  in  green.  Those  were  the  days  when 
Coleridge  and  Southey  were  building,  of  cloud  and  moonbeam, 
their  notable  fabric  of  pantisocracy,  the  government  of  all  by 
all ;  where  every  man,  as  Louis  Blanc  promised,  would  keep 
his  carriage.  James  Montgomery,  in  those  days,  found  him- 
self a  dangerous  person,  and  was  immured  in  a  prison. 
Wordsworth  looked  dark  and  dangerous.  It  was  a  strange 
and  tumultuous  time.  The  great  era  of  doubting  had  finally 
come.  All  things  were  subjected  to  a  trial  as  of  fire,  and  an- 
tiquity seemed  only  to  make  them  burn  better. 

Foster  was  deeply  aflected  by  the  great  changes  taking 


JOHN     FOSTER.  313 

place.  Both  politically  and  rcligioirjly,  his  c pinions  became 
unsettled — we  might  almost  say,  wild  ;  while  the  turmoil  and 
confusion  in  his  mind  were  greatly  aggravated  by  individual 
characteristics.  For  far  different  questions  presented  them- 
selves to  his  mind  than  troubled  other  democrats.  He  pon- 
dered deeply  on  the  human  tale,  and  the  unfathomable  dealings 
of  God  with  man.  That  insatiable  yearning,  which  has  marked 
the  noblest  minds,  to  penetrate  the  gloom  that  surrounds  the 
destiny  of  man,  to  call  a  voice  from  the  silence  in  which  we 
thread  our  way  through  immensity  ;  that  sublime  want  and 
disease  wliich  points  to  the  state  which  is  man's  health,  and 
the  place  which  is  man's  home,  w^as  a  prominent  and  life-long 
characteristic  of  Foster.  At  first  his  ideas  on  these  matters 
were  confused,  tumultuous,  and  wrapped  in  deepest  gloom ; 
for  a  time,  a  ray  as  of  dawning  light  seemed  to  fall  on  them, 
and  he  was  joyous  and  full  of  hope  ;  then  this  again  proved 
itself  an  earthly  meteor,  and  no  true  herald  of  day  ;  finally 
the  gloom  again  fell  in  thick  shadows,  but  in  his  own  hand  was 
a  lamp  which  made  him  at  least  secure  and  calm. 

"  At  some  moments,"  he  says,  "  life,  the  world,  mankind, 
religion,  and  eternity,  appear  to  me  like  one  vast  scene  of  tre- 
mendous confusion,  stretching  before  me  far  away,  and  closed 
in  shades  of  the  most  dreadful  darkness — a  darkness  which 
only  the  most  powerful  splendors  of  Deity  can  illumine,  and 
which  appears  as  if  they  never  yet  had  illumined  it." 

Such  causes  of  internal  unrest  complicated  greatly  the  diffi- 
culties with  which  Foster  had  to  contend.  As  yet  the  light 
of  religion  shed  no  definite  radiance.  He  had  not  settled  for 
himself  the  old  question  put  to  us  so  emphatically  in  our 
time,  "  What  think  ye  of  Christ — whose  son  is  He  1"  He  was 
not  absolutely  sure  whether  He  was  the  son  cf  God,  or  only 
the  supreme  of  finite  beings.     He  looked  eagerly  in  a  direo- 

14 


314  JOHN     FOSTER, 

tion  different  from  that  where  rested,  calm  amid  all  tempests, 
the  banner  of  the  Prince  of  Peace.  He  tm'ned  for  a  time  to 
Thomas  Paine.  The  first  rude  accents  of  universal  freedom, 
which,  rude  as  they  were,  we  yet  respect,  caught  his  ear ;  he 
spoke  of  the  "  rights  of  men,"  and  "  all  that,  and  all  that." 
Nay,  with  a  smile  of  amazement  we  see  the  gentle,  pensive, 
musing  Foster  in  Dublin,  hand  in  glove  with  a  crew  of  fiery 
democratic  Irishmen,  calling  himself  a  "  son  of  Brutus  !" 

The  aspect,  indeed,  of  this  whole  period  of  Foster's  history 
is  that  of  distraction  and  disquiet.  There  is  a  want  of  settled 
determination,  of  deliberate  working  energy,  of  manlike  fix- 
edness of  aim.  We  can  mark  in  his  active  life  the  alternation 
of  spasmodic  effort,  with  too  great  relaxation  of  mind ;  and 
what  remain  to  us  of  his  ^vritings  bear  a  similar  testimony. 
We  meet  with  flashes  of  strong  discernment  in  thought,  and 
striking  brilliancy  in  expression  ;  of  indications  of  genius  there 
is  no  lack  ;  but  we  ever  feel  that  this,  as  he  tells  us  he  was 
himself  conscious,  is  not  his  rest.  One  thing,  however,  is 
always  beyond  doubt,  and  it  is  of  a  nature  to  impart  to  all 
deviations  and  distractions  a  deep  value  and  interest.  Through 
his  whole  life  and  thinking  there  burns  the  fire  of  an  inde- 
structible ardor  in  the  search  for  truth,  and  a  determination, 
come  what  may,  to  put  up  with  no  counterfeit ;  sacred  and 
unquenchable,  we  see  this  glowing  in  his  letters  and  stray 
sentences,  a  vailed  radiance  but  of  heavenly  brightness.  Was 
not  this  the  light  that  had  been  kindled  in  him  when  he  un- 
bosomed his  youthful  sorrow  to  Henry  Horsfall  1 

In  early  life,  "  before  the  age  of  twenty,"  he  commenced  the 
practice  of  jotting  down  observations  and  reflections  ;  of  these 
he  carefully  copied  out  a  copious  selection,  entitling  them,  "A 
Chinese  Garden  of  Flowers  and  Weeds."  It  is  a  strange  med- 
ley, of  great  interest,  and  strikingly  illustrative  of  the  varying 


JOHN     FOSTER.  315 

mood  of  his  mincl.  It  abounds  in  passages  of  beauty  and  even 
of  firandcur  ;  at  intervals  we  meet  an  observation  on  men  and 
character  somewhat  severely  true  ;  his  strong  tendency  toward 
the  mysterious,  his  deep  devout  earnestness,  the  excellences 
and  the  defects  of  his  imagination,  and  his  genuine  though 
somewhat  restrained  and  impaired  love  of  nature,  all  reveal 
themselves.  He  longs  for  what  he  names  "  an  extensive  at- 
mosphere of  consciousness,"  but  which  we  should  call  rather  a 
universal  and  tender  sympathy,  which,  "  like  an  Eolian  harp," 
might  "  arrest  even  the  vagrant  winds  and  make  them  music." 
Of  a  calm  and  beautiful  evening  we  hear  him  say,  that  it  is  as 
if  the  soul  of  Eloisa  pervaded  the  air :  the  idea  has  always  ap- 
peared to  us  delicately  and  extremely  beautiful.  He  reads 
Milton,  and  pictures  to  himself  his  world  of  spirits.  He  peers 
earnestly  into  the  deeps  of  the  olden  eternity,  and  could  even 
wish  for  death  to  snap  the  gravitation  of  earth :  "  I  can  not 
wonder,"  he  says,  "  that  this  intense  and  sublime  curiosity  has 
sometimes  demolished  the  corporeal  prison,  by  flinging  it 
from  a  precipice  or  into  the  sea."  Then,  it  may  be,  his  imagin- 
ation lapses  into  a  wild  and  freakish  mood  :  he  figures  himself, 
in  great  exultation,  tossing  on  the  waves  of  a  flaming  ocean, 
rising  sky-high  on  the  peaks  of  frvQ  ;  or,  he  looks  on  a  file  of 
clouds  slowly  and  darkly  trooping  along  the  sky  before  the 
wind,  his  imagination  transforming  them  into  gaunt  and  sullen 
giants,  that  frown  grimly  to  the  soft  smile  of  the  interspersed 
azure.  Presently,  in  milder  and  higher  mood,  he  dreams  of  a 
visitant  that  comes  to  his  earnest  longings  from  the  celestial 
choirs  ;  he  walks  in  thought  by  his  side,  propounds  to  him  the 
questions  he  has  been  gathering  up  for  eternity,  listens,  in  re- 
vering and  wondering  love,  to  every  word  in  reply,  and  thinks 
that  he  has  at  last  found  his  ideal  friend  and  his  satisfying  in- 
formant.    Soon  he  is  again  in  the  throng  of  commo.i  men  and 


316  JOHN     FOSTER. 

women  making  his  half-cynical  remarks  :  he  gravely  lets  us 
know  that,  when  he  goes  into  company,  he  can  see  the  ladies 
taking  his  measure,  and  thinking  they  have  it,  while  he  knows 
well  enough  they  have  not  nor  are  capable  of  having ;  some 
one  speaks  to  him  about  a  certain  "  narrow-minded  religion- 
ist ;"  "  Mr.  T.,"  he  replies,  "  sees  religion  not  as  a  sphere  but 
as  a  line  ;  and  it  is  the  identical  line  in  which  he  is  moving ;" 
sometimes  his  satiric  fancy  takes  a  wider  sweep,  and  fancying 
the  sun  an  intelligence,  he  figures  his  rage  and  disappoint- 
ment at  the  miserable  show  the  world  turns  out  for  him 
to  light  up,  "  a  tiresome  repetition  of  stupidity,  follies,  and 
crimes." 

Foster's  life  during  this  which  we  have  called  his  transition 
period,  was  externally  as  well  as  internally  full  of  vicissitude. 
He  went  from  situation  to  situation,  from  England  to  Ireland, 
from  Ireland  to  England,  and  from  England  to  Ireland  agaifi, 
without  finding  a  permanent  resting-place.  His  preaching  was 
nowhere  acceptable  with  the  mass  of  the  people ;  instead  of 
being  a  center  of  attraction,  he  was  decidedly  a  center  of  re- 
pulsion in  the  congregations  where  he  ministered.  He  was 
really  and  deeply  defective  as  a  preacher.  His  manner  was 
always,  and  exceedingly  bad.  We  can  not  doubt,  also,  that  a 
tendency  to  excessive  refining  made  his  sermons  difficult  to 
follow.  The  writer,  over  whose  pages  a  reader  can  pore  until 
he  has  analyzed  every  clause  and  paragraph,  may  trace  what 
labyrinths  he  chooses  to  enter,  may  lead  his  readers  by  what 
thin  silken  thread  or  what  faint  taper-light  he  thinks  fit ;  but 
oratory  of  every  sort,  and  none  the  less  but  perhaps  rather  the 
more  pulpit  oratory,  demands  the  strongly -marked  line  of  dis- 
tinction, the  bold  and  massive  argument,  the  clear  broad  gleam 
of  light.  Of  this  Foster  was  never  fully  conscious,  or  if  con- 
scious of  the  fact  and  of  his  want,  he  yet  failed  to  amend  it. 


JOHN     FOSTER.  317 

It  might,  too,  we  think,  be  affirmed  that  his  tone  of  remark 
had,  at  times,  an  air  somewhat  unnatural  and  far-fetched ;  not 
obvious  certainly,  but  not  perfectly  natural,  and  we  know  that 
novelty  and  nature  must  unite  to  produce  any  sort  of  literary 
excellence.  However  if  was,  he  was  certainly  unsuccessful  as 
a  preacher.  He  went  from  chapel  to  chapel  in  vain ;  his  deli- 
cacies ^^  ere  rejected  by  the  body  of  the  people :  they  desired 
bread.  There  were  generally  a  few  who  esteemed  his  teach- 
ing very  highly. 

To  trace  his  external  career  in  all  its  changes  during  these 
ten  years,  is  uncalled  for.  His  general  course  of  life  can  be 
easily  conceived.  He  spent  much  time  in  musing.  By  the 
banks  of  the  Tyne,  and  in  the  meadows  about  Newcastle,  he 
might  have  been  seen,  pensive  and  thoughtful,  his  eye  often 
abstracted,  yet  at  times  lit  up  with  a  glance  of  keenest  scrutiny 
and  shrewdness.  At  Chichester,  where  we  fmd  him  a  few 
years  afterward,  he  used  to  pace  the  aisles  of  his  chapel,  in 
the  silent  moonlight,  thinking  earnestly,  and  it  seems  to  have 
been  in  those  still  hours,  that  wider  and  calmer  views  touch- 
ing time  and  eternity,  God  and  man,  gradually  opened  up  be- 
fore him. 

One  or  two  extracts  from  his  correspondence  of  this  time 
will  best  illustrate  his  mental  condition. 

"  I  sometimes  fall  into  profound  musings  on  the  state  of  this 
great  world,  on  the  nature  and  the  destinies  of  man,  on  the 
subject  of  the  question, '  What  is  truth  V  The  whole  hemi- 
sphere of  contemplation  appears  inexpressibly  strange  and 
mysterious.  It  is  cloud  pursuing  cloud,  forest  after  forest,  and 
Alps  upon  Alps.  It  is  vain  to  declaim  against  skepticism.  I 
feel  with  an  emphasis  of  conviction,  and  wonder,  and  regret, 
that  almost  all  things  are  covered  with  thickest  darkness,  that 
the  number  of  things  to  which  certainty  belongs  is  small.     I 


318  JOHN     FOSTER. 

hope  to  enjoy  the  simshme  of  the  other  world.  One  of  the 
very  few  things  that  appear  to  me  not  doubtful  is  the  truth  of 
Christianity  in  general."  This  passage  we  deem  of  great  in- 
terest and  importance.  The  earnest,  religious  Foster  gazes 
forward  and"  around ;  in  every  direction  he  sees  stretch- 
ing away  the  infinitude  of  wonder,  in  which  floats  our  little 
world,  and  his  eye  falls  only  on  thick  tempestuous  gloom  ;  he 
turns  almost  in  despair  from  the  clouded  heaven,  and  longs 
for  the  sunlight  of  eternity.  On  one  point  he  is  assured  :  but 
it  is  not  sufficient  to  give  him  rest  and  satisfaction.  Christian- 
ity came  from  God  :  this  he  accepts  as  a  general  proposition. 
And  while  he  doubts  not  of  this,  while  he  deliberately  and  im- 
movably believes  that  the  Maker  has  broken  silence  in  time, 
and  spoken  to  the  creature  in  Christianity,  he  is  severed  by  an 
unfathomable  gulf  from  every  variety  of  mere  philosophic 
morality,  from  all  that  can  be  called  bare  natural  religion. 
Yet  this  is  not  enough  to  give  him  rest ;  general  beliefs  never 
bring  stable  tranquillity.  He  knows  that  God  has  spoken  :  but 
can  a  reasonable  being,  so  believing,  rest  while  he  has  no  defi- 
nite conviction  of  the  import  of  what  He  has  said  ? 

There  is  progress  indicated  in  the  next,  "  Oh,  what  a  diffi- 
cult thing  it  is  to  be  a  Christian !  I  feel  the  necessity  of  re- 
form through  all  my  soul.  When  I  retire  into  thought,  I  find 
myself  environed  by  a  crowd  of  impressive  and  awful  images ; 
I  fix  an  ardent  gaze  on  Christianity,  assuredly  the  last  best  gift 
of  Heaven  to  men  ;  on  Jesus  the  agent  and  example  of  infinite 
love ;  on  time  as  it  passes  away ;  on  perfection  as  it  shines 
beauteous  as  heaven,  and,  alas !  as  remote  ;  on  my  own  be- 
loved  soul  which  I  have  injured,  and  on  the  unhappy  multi- 
tude of  souls  around  me  ;  and  I  ask  myself.  Why  do  not  my 
passions  burn  ?  Why  does  not  zeal  arise  in  mighty  wrath  to 
dash  my  icy  habits  in  pieces,  t^   scourge  me  from  indolence 


JOHK     FOSTER.  319 

into  ferviji  exertion,  and  to  trample  all  mean  sentiments  in  the 
dust?  At  intervals  I  feel  devotion  and  benevolence,  and  a 
surpassing  ardor  ;  but  when  they  are  turned  toward  substan- 
tial, laborious  operation,  they  fly  and  leave  me  spiritless  amid 
the  iron  labor.  Still,  however,  I  do  confide  in  the  efficacy  of 
persistive  prayer ;  and  I  do  hope  that  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord 
will  yet  come  mightily  upon  me,  and  carry  me  on  through 
toils,  and  suffering,  and  death,  to  stand  in  Mount  Zion  among 
the  followers  of  the  Lamb  !" 

As  probably  every  man  of  high  moral  and  intellectual  en- 
dowment, Foster,  in  the  first  ardor  and  poetry  of  youth,  had 
looked  upon  perfection  as  it  shone  beauteous  as  heaven ;  he 
had  felt  profoundly  and  unaffectedly  that  the  world  is  not 
dressed  in  those  robes  of  purity  and  beauty  in  which  it  could 
possibly  have  come  from  the  hand  of  an  infinite  God.  He  re- 
cognized the  universal  imperfection,  and  felt  it  most  keenly  in 
his  own  bosom.  At  times  his  heart  would  burn  with  an  ardor 
that  appeared  unquenchable ;  he  seemed  to  shout  for  the  bat- 
tle, and  to  rush  out  to  confront  the  foe :  but  the  world  stood 
there  in  its  armed  and  serried  ranks,  its  thousand  eyes  looking 
Stony  defiance  and  inflexible  hate ;  he  dropped  his  weapon  and 
recoiled  before  the  iron  labor.  But  he  has  made  progress.  A 
general  belief  in  Christianity  has  become  an  earnest  personal 
straining  of  the  eye  toward  Jesus ;  though  all  on  earth  fail 
him,  and  though  his  own  heart  harbors  traitors,  yet  is  there 
an  ever-living  Spirit  of  the  Lord,  and  His  ear  can  be  reached 
by  a  mortal  by  persistive  prayer. 

"  Every  new  reflection  tells  me  that  my  evangelic  determin. 
ations  ought  to  be,  and  every  hope  flatters  that  they  will  be, 
irreversible.  Assembling  into  one  view  all  things  in  the 
world  that  are  important,  and  should  be  dear,  to  mankind,  I 
distinguish  the  Christian  cause  as  the  celestial  soul  of  the  as- 


320  JOHN     FOSTER. 

semblage,  evincing  the  same  pre-eminence,  and  challenging 
the  same  emphatic  passion  which,  in  any  other  case,  mind  does 
beyond  the  inferior  elements  ;  and  I  have  no  wish  of  equal  en- 
ergy with  that  which  aspires  to  the  most  intimate  possible  con- 
nection with  Him  who  is  the  life  of  this  cause,  and  the  life  of 
the  world." 

Yet  again,  writing  to  his  friend  Hughes,  he  says : — "  The 
Gospel  is  to  me,  not  a  matter  of  complacent  speculation  only, 
but  of  momentous  use,  of  urgent  necessity.  I  come  to  Jesus 
Christ  because  I  need  pardon,  and  purification,  and  strength, 
/feel  more  abased,  as  he  appears  more  divine.  In  the  dust  I 
listen  to  his  instructions  and  commands.  1  pray  fervently  in 
his  name,  and  above  all  things  for  a  happy  union  with  him.  I 
do,  and  will  proclaim  him.  For  his  sake  I  am  willing  to  go 
through  evil  report  and  good  report.  I  wish  to  live  and  die 
in  his  service.  Is  not  this  some  resemblance  of '  the  simplici- 
ty' of  the  fishermen,  on  which  you  insist  with  emphasis  1 
Tliis  spirit,  my  dear  friend,  is  in  a  certain  degree,  to  be,  I 
trust,  divinely  augmented — assuredly  mine.  The  Galilean 
faith  has  gained  the  ascendant,"  etc. 

"  The  Galilean  faith  has  gained  the  ascendant !"  After  all 
doubting  and  striving,  this  is  the  resting-place ;  he  sits  lilce  a 
child  at  the  feet  of  Jesus.  Silently  as  the  sleep  of  returning 
health,  there  steals  over  the  mind  of  Foster  that  peace  which 
was  the  legacy  of  our  Master.  True,  his  contendings  are  not 
yet  at  an  end,  darkness  and  dismay  at  times  seem  still  closing 
round  him :  but  he  now  discerns  his  work,  he  now  sees  the 
goal,  he  can  now  measure  the  enemy's  force,  and  knows  Who 
is  fighting  on  his  own  side ;  stern  as  he  may  feel  his  own  con- 
test to  be,  mournfully  slight  as  may  be  his  impression  on  the 
ranks  of  the  foe,  he  knows  that,  one  good  day,  the  battle  will 
be  won. 


JOHN     FOSTER.  321 

His  i.^tellectnal  position  he  thus  defines : — "  My  opinions 
are  in  substance  decidedly  Calvinistic.  I  am  firmly  convinced, 
for  instance,  of  the  doctrines  of  original  sin,  predestination,  im- 
puted righteousness,  the  necessity  of  the  Holy  Spirit's  opera^ 
tion  to  convert  the  mind,  final  perseverance,  etc.,  etc.  As  to 
the  doctrine  of  the  divinity  of  Christ,  I  do  not  deny  that  I  had 
once  some  degree  of  doubt,  but  not  such  a  degree  ever  as  to 
carry  me  any  thing  near  the  adoption  of  an  opposite  or  differ- 
ent opinion.  It  was  by  no  means  disbelief;  it  was  rather  a 
hesitation  to  decide,  and  without  much,  I  think,  of  the  vanity 
of  speculation.  But  for  a  long  while  past  I  have  fully  felt  the 
necessity  of  dismissing  subtle  speculations  and  distinctions, 
and  of  yielding  a  humble,  cordial  assent  to  the  mysterious 
truth,  just  as  and  because  the  Scriptures  declare  it,  without  in- 
quiring, '  How  can  these  things  be  V  " 

Thus  had  Foster  arrived  at  that  great  epoch  in  a  man's  life, 
when  he  can  feel  with  a  good  conscience  that  his  work  is  found, 
and  that,  until  his  allotment  of  time  is  spent,  he  is  delivered 
from  the  fickle  and  distempered  sway  of  change.  The  period 
of  this  consummation  was  auspiciously  marked  by  another  of 
equally  happy  omen.  He  now  at  length  met  one  whom  he 
could  entirely  love,  and  who  reciprocated  the  aff*ection. 

A  few  words  will  be  well  spent  in  glancing  at  this  last  happy 
crisis  in  Foster's  life.  In  judging  of  one  who  has  been  so 
widely  characterized  as  a  misanthrope  and  impersonation  of 
cold  intellectual  sternness,  it  may  be  of  some  avail  to  know 
assuredly  how  he  acted  as  lover,  as  father,  and  as  husband. 
We  desire  definiteness  and  certainty  on  these  points  :  both  can 
be  attained  with  very  little  loss  of  time. 

We  presume  that  the  biography  of  Foster,  by  his  friends 
Messrs.  Ryland  and  Sheppard,  must  have  ere  now  dissipated 
the  general  idea  that  he  was  unsocial.     Of  delicate  sympathies 
14* 


322  JOHN     FOSTER. 

and  high  intellectual  tastes,  he  was,  of  necessity,  sensible  of 
something  alien  and  uncomfortable  in  an  atmosphere  of  dull- 
ness, presumption,  or  frivolity ;  but  he  enjoyed,  with  a  more 
lively  relish  than  is  anywise  common,  the  gentle,  animating 
influence  of  noble  converse. 

This  fact  is  confirmed,  and  the  assurance  we  have  that  there 
was  no  total  absence  of  the  light  and  poetical  ingredients  in 
Foster's  character,  well  illustrated,  by  his  short  series  of  let- 
ters to  Miss  Caroline  Carpenter,  a  young  lady  who  attracted 
his  attention,  before  he  met  her  who  became  his  wife.  These 
are  quite  in  the  tone  of  a  sentimental  scion  of  chivalry.  He 
waxes  very  gallant.  He  is  not  perhaps  in  exact  drawing-room 
costume ;  the  clank  of  the  chain  armor  is  heard,  half-muffled 
by  the  silken  doublet ;  even  in  his  mood  of  extreme  politeness, 
he  can  not  be  weak  or  frivolous.  He  does  not  attain  a  fault- 
less ball-room  idiom ;  he  has  always  had  something  to  say,  so 
that  he  has  not  had  practice  in  the  art  of  piquantly  and  sim- 
peringly  saying  nothing.  Shall  we  blame  him  1  Perhaps  the 
thing  transcends  the  limited  human  faculties.  "  Pure,  invol- 
untary, unconscious  nonsense,"  Southey  thought,  "  is  inimita- 
ble by  any  effort  of  sense."  But  no  one  can  read  these  letters 
without  recognizing  a  fine  youthful  strength  of  emotion,  a 
genial  heartiness  and  warmth,  removed  very  far  from  aught 
allied  to  austerity.     Miss  Carpenter  died  young. 

It  was  not  until  he  attained  his  thirtieth  or  thirty-first  year, 
that  Foster  met  the  lady  to  whom  he  was  afterward  married. 
She  was  a  woman  cast  in  no  common  m.old.  Her  faculties 
and  her  will  were  powerful ;  her  feelings  were  of  great  strength, 
and  rested  more  deeply  in  her  breast  than  is  usual  in  her  sex ; 
her  character  was  completed  and  crowned  by  Christianity. 
She  had  entered  regvDns  of  contemplation  far  beyond  those  of 
ordinary  minds,  and  her  deep  musings  on  the  dark  and  won- 


JOHN     FOSTER.  323 

derful  in  human  destiny  had  imparted  to  her  character  a  state- 
liness  and  solemn  repose.  She  was  an  earnest,  intellectual 
woman,  sensible  to  high  ambitions,  and  fitted,  every  way,  to 
be  the  friend  and  counselor  of  a  true  man.  Foster  addressed 
his  essays  to  her ;  she  could  judge  of  them  sternly  and  well. 
She  was  able  to  sympathize  with  him  in  his  highest  moments. 
Nay,  she  was  perhaps  by  one  shade  too  congenial  with  Foster ; 
another  gleam  of  sunlight  had  been  a  clear  advantage.  A 
friendship  such  as  can  exist  only  between  noble  spirits  arose  be- 
tween them,  a  friendship  founded  in  natural,  unforced  sympa- 
thy, and  growing  by  the  waters  of  immortality.  After  two 
years  of  intimacy,  it  began  to  lose  its  name  in  the  intensity  of 
love,  and  they  resolved  to  become  knit  in  the  closest  bonds 
with  which  friendship  can  be  bound  on  earth.  Five  years  still 
elapsed  ere  they  were  married.  Foster's  preaching  could  not 
be  depended  on  for  a  livelihood,  and  it  was  only  when  he  be- 
came permanently  connected  with  the  Eclectic  Review,  that  he 
took  home  his  friend,  and  called  her  wife.  After  five  years 
waiting,  he  did  this  with  signal  joy.  All  nature,  he  tells  us, 
seemed  brightening  around  him ;  Spring  advanced  with  a  new 
smile ;  the  very  roses  that  wreathed  her  brow,  the  very  light 
that  beamed  from  her  eye,  caught  new  radiance  from  that  fig- 
ure, whom,  this  time,  she  led  in  her  hand. 

The  married  life  of  Foster  was  such  as  might  have  been 
hoped  for.  There  had  been  no  taint  in  the  original  affection. 
There  had  been  no  base  thought  of  gold.  Nor  had  he  married 
n  the  blindness  of  passion.  For  this,  too,  is  a  fatally  erroneous 
iourse.  Men  are  to  marry  in  emotions  they  share  with  the 
angel ;  not  with  the  animal.  Foster  knew  that  when,  in  the 
calm  and  real  atmosphere  of  life,  the  fever  of  love's  first  in- 
tensity was  cooled,  and  passion's  fine  frenzy  had  passed  away, 
he  would  still  see  in  the  eyes  of  his  Maria  the  immortal  sym- 


324  JOHN     FOSTER. 

pathy  of  friendship,  deeper  than  sex,  stronger  than  passion, 
fadeless  to  eternity.  Perhaps  the  severest  form  of  human 
sorrow,  that  which  most  nearly  approaches  the  slow  gnawing 
agony  of  him  fixed  hoj^eless  on  the  immovable  rock,  arises 
from  marriage  in  which  there  never  was  any  friendship,  but  the 
original  bond  was  earthly  passion,  arrogating  to  itself,  with  the 
impudent  lie  of  a  harlot,  the  heavenly  name  of  love.  It  is 
only  base  natures  that  are  beguiled  by  the  vulgar  glare  of  gold, 
natures  incapable  of  lofty  joy  or  acute  sorrow.  But  passion 
is  a  Syren  of  more  winning  song,  of  more  fatally  charming 
lure ;  the  warm,  the  impulsive,  the  noble  fall  victims  to  her, 
and,  after  a  short  delirious  dream,  awake  to  a  life  of  hopeless 
misery.  Friendship  and  love  must  unite  in  every  married  un- 
ion where  happiness  can  be  reasonably  expected  or  truly  de- 
served :  and  by  friendship  we  mean  an  affection  arising  from 
pure  sympathy  of  spirit,  independent  of  aught  else.  Let  none 
look  for  happiness  in  marriage  who  are  unable  deliberately  and 
firmly  to  declare,  that  it  would  be  a  happiness  to  live  together 
for  life,  though  they  were  of  the  same  sex.  We  state  this  with 
some  breadth,  and  do  so  with  consideration ;  we  point  to  a  hid- 
den rock  round  which  the  ocean  seems  to  smile  in  sunny  calm, 
but  on  which  many  a  noble  bark  has  perished.  Foster's  mar- 
riage was  such  as  beseems  a  man.  The  affection  began  in 
friendship,  and  around  this,  as  around  a  rod  of  heaven's  gold, 
the  flowers  and  fruits  of  earth's  pure  love,  those  tender  joys 
and  beloved  interests  which  a  bounteous  and  motherly  nature 
fails  not  to  supply,  when  man  has  rightly  and  valiantly  per 
formed  his  part,  gradually  and  gracefully  came  to  cluster. 

"  In  passion's  flame 
Hearts  melt,  but  melt  like  ice  soon  liardei*  froze. 
True  love  strikes  root  in  reason." 


JOHN     FOSTER.  *  325 

Foster  was  never  compelled,  in  his  moments  of  lofty  thought 
and  exalted  sentiment,  to  withdraw  himself,  at  least  by  silence, 
from  her  who  was  to  sojourn  with  him  inseparably  on  earth ; 
he  did  not,  in  the  presence  of  others,  treat  his  wife's  remarks 
as  frivolous,  or  her  opinions  as  slight :  he  found  in  her  the 
sympathy,  and  accorded  her  the  natural  habitual  respect  of 
friendship.  And  let  no  one  think  that  their  happiness  was 
merely  negative ;  a  monotonous  and  insipid  respect  or  admira- 
tion, instead  of  the  warm,  enthusiastic,  unutterable  intensity 
of  love.  Love  cast  its  golden  anchors  in  their  heart  of  hearts, 
affecting  every  pulse  of  their  being. 

And  a  genial  home  they  had  ;  natural  fountains  of  childish 
mirth  and  parental  pride  continually  welling  up  within  it. 
Long  after  liis  marriage  Foster  wrote  thus  : — "  I  have  noticed 
the  curious  fact,  of  the  difference  of  the  effect  of  what  other 
people's  children  do  and  our  own.  In  the  situations  I  have  for- 
merly been  in,  any  great  noise  and  racket  of  children  would 
have  extremely  incommoded  me,  if  I  wanted  to  read,  think,  or 
write.  But  I  never  mind,  as  to  any  such  matter  of  inconveni- 
ence, how  much  din  is  made  by  these  brats,  if  it  is  not  abso- 
lutely in  the  room  where  I  am  at  work.  When  I  am  with 
them,  I  am  apt  to  make  them,  and  join  in  making  them,  make 
a  still  bigger  tumult  and  noise,  so  that  their  mother  sometimes 
complains  that  we  all  want  whipping  together."  The  happi- 
ness here  is  very  real.  The  fact  of  "  these  brats"  being  privi- 
leged, though  singular,  is  not  unexampled.  Richt^r,  when  res- 
olute performance  of  duty  made  him  deny  himself  even  his 
ordinary  meals,  yet  professed  his  inability  to  deny  himself  the 
interruption  of  his  children.  We  desire  no  farther  refutation 
of  what,  to  our  astonishment,  we  have  seen  alleged  touching 
Foster's  sternness  in  his  own  household  :  this  single  passage, 
casting,  as  it  does,  a  light  before  and  after,  is  the  condensation 


326  *  JOHN     FOSTER. 

of  a  tliousar.d  proofs  that  every  member  of  his  faLlily  was  a 
note  in  a  perfect  harmony,  and  that,  in  the  fine  music  which 
was  the  result,  the  silver  treble  of  childhood  rung  clearly  and 
cheerily.  Look  at  that  father  as  he  rises  from  his  work,  yield- 
ing to  the  fond  and  joyous  impulse  of  his  breast,  snatches  up 
his  children,  tosses  them  in  the  air,  and  becomes  merely  the 
biggest  and  loudest  child  of  the  group :  then  endeavor  to  suit 
the  part  he  acts  to  the  grave,  stern,  grimly  intellectual  Foster 
of  whom  you  have  heard. 

A  disorder  in  his  throat,  together  with  his  striking  unpopu- 
larity, made  it  now  advisable  for  Foster  to  relinquish  regular 
preaching.  His  virtual  profession  became  literature.  During 
a  protracted  life  he  brought  his  influence  to  bear  on  his  age 
through  the  press.  His  residence  was,  for  the  most  part,  the 
vicinity  of  Bristol.  There  he  worked  steadily,  in  the  heart  of 
a  peacefully  happy  home,  cheered  by  the  sympathy  of  a  noble 
wife  and  the  glad  looks  of  his  own  children.  In  the  following 
paragraphs,  we  shall  first  define,  generally,  the  attitude  in 
which  he  stood  to  God  and  man  ;  and  then,  more  particularly, 
consider  certain  of  the  remarkable  points  in  his  system  of 
opinion. 

When  the  restlessness  of  youth  began  to  settle  into  the  se- 
riousness of  manhood,  Foster  seems  to  have  looked  more 
earnestly  into  "  the  abysmal  deeps  of  personality,"  into  his 
own  soul,  than  ever  formerly.  He  found  it  not  what  a  spirit 
endued  with  power  to  know  its  Author  could  normally,  and 
by  original  intention  be  ;  it  was  an  exception  and  anomaly  in 
the  works  of  Him  who  formed  the  lily  and  the  star.  And 
this  imperfection  he  perceived  to  be  singular  in  its  character. 
The  consciousness  of  himself  and  his  race,  written  deep  and 
ineffaceable,  as  in  eternal  adamant,  proclaimed  man  to  be  a 
being,  in  such  sense  free,  that  he  was  responsible.     The  stam 


JOHN     FOSTER.  327 

on  the  flower  and  the  speck  in  the  star  were  innocent  imper- 
fection :  the  stain  on  his  soul  was  guilt.  Man  stood  on  the 
peaks  of  the  world,  where  no  other  creature  born  of  earth 
could  come,  and,  as  to  him  alone  was  given  to  gaze  upward 
and  onward  to  the  infinitude  of  spiritual  glories,  so  for  him 
alone  existed  the  possibility  of  an  infinite  descent.  In  so  mys- 
erious  and  awful  a  system  of  relations,  it  was  of  unspeakable 
moment  that  it  should  be  certainly  known  that  there  was  a 
living  and  governing  God.  This  central  truth  seems  never  to 
have  been  questioned  by  Foster.  Nor  did  he  ever  seriously 
doubt  whether  this  God  had  actually  and  specially  spoken  in 
the  Bible.  His  doubts  pertained  mainly  to  the  mode  in  which 
the  word  "  Christ"  was  to  be  taken — as  the  word  of  reconcile- 
ment, of  explanation,  of  healing — the  explicative  formula  of 
the  universe — the  ladder  between  time  and  eternity,  between 
God  and  man.  Whether  Christ  was  God,  or  only  a  sublime 
created  being,  was,  for  a  time,  to  him  doubtful.  He  question- 
ed, he  hesitated,  he  speculated.  But  as  his  mind  matured, 
and  to  the  eye  of  contemplation  the  universe  seemed  to  deepen 
and  widen  around  him,  he  became  gradually  more  and  more 
impressed  with  the  feebleness  of  human  speculation,  and  the 
strength  of  simple,  if  honest  and  earnest,  faith.  His  conception 
of  the  infantine  weakness  of  the  reason  of  himself  and  his  breth- 
ren, went  on  deepening,  and  stern  and  indubitable  traces  of  law 
met  his  eye  more  and  more  boldly,  as  he  advanced  in  years. 
He  was  profoundly  impressed  with  the  mystery  which  envelops 
human  things  when  contemplated  by  human  reason.  The 
poor  finite  creature  stood  on  his  little  world,  and  cast  out  the 
sounding-line  of  his  tiny  intellect  into  the  abysses  of  infinitude ; 
for  a  little  space  it  seemed  to  live,  for  one  little  moment  it 
seemed  to  be  piercing  the  darkness,  like  those  darting  threads 
of  light  seen  in  November ;  but  then  it  was  swallowed  up  in 


328  JOHN     FOSTER. 

the  infinite  hollow  of  the  night.  He  heard  afar  the  music  of 
the  redeemed,  he  looked  to  the  heaven  of  perfect  holiness,  he 
earnestly  yearned  thither  ;  but  guilt  obscured  the  heavens,  and 
speculation  could  not  pierce  the  gloom.  The  infinite  value  of 
a  definite  declaration  on  the  part  of  the  living  God  became 
then  manifest ;  it  seemed  plain  to  his  uncontrolled  reason  that 
the  Bible  aflfbrded  such,  in  pronouncing  Christ  the  equal  of 
the  Father,  the  Infinite  God.  If  this  truth  was  mysterious,  it 
was  at  least  certain :  speculation,  while  unable  to  penetrate 
mystery,  had  at  the  same  time  strengthened  the  hand  of  doubt ; 
but  here  doubt  was  slain.  He  accepted  it.  Believing  defi- 
nitely in  the  divinity  of  Christ,  and  resolving  to  take  the  facts 
of  the  universe  as  God  had  first  fixed  and  then  revealed  them, 
he  adopted  the  general  system  of  belief  which  has  been  that 
of  so  many  of  earth's  most  earnest  and  mighty  thinkers.  He 
consented  to  see  mankind  as  a  drop  of  water  resting  in  the 
Mlow  of  Jehovah's  hand  ;  he  subscribed  to  all  the  essential 
articles  of  that  reading  of  man's  destiny  and  God's  revelation, 
known  for  several  ages  as  Calvinism.  Such  was  Foster's  final 
religious  attitude. 

The  political  ground  which  he  came  to  assume  was  worthy 
of  himself  as  a  man  and  a  Christian.  When  the  atmosphere 
of  the  world  was  all  in  vibration  with  the  shouts  of  joy,  of 
triumph,  and  of  hope — when  many  nations  seemed  about  to 
join  in  choral  dance  around  a  freedom  arrayed  in  the  snowy 
robe — when  love  was  finally  to  become  lord  of  all,  and  science, 
the  minister  of  love,  to  vanquish  even  death — it  was  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  Foster,  for  a  time,  almost  exulted  in  his  hu- 
manity, and  forgot  the  chains  which  may  cramp  and  degrade 
the  soul  bound  by  no  external  bondage.  He  took  up,  as  we 
have  seen,  with  sons  of  Brutus  and  the  writings  of  Tom  Paine  : 
perhaps  the  tough  old  world  was  to  be  renovated  even  so ! 


JOHN     FOSTER.  32C 

But  the  earnestness  of  his  being,  the  singleness  of  his  eye, 
could  not  but  dissipate  such  delusions.  Gradually  the  roman- 
tic light  was  seen  to  fade  from  human  history  and  human  na- 
ture. Like  a  true  and  valiant  man,  he  dared  to  look  until  he 
saw  the  worst,  and  as  he  gazed  with  determined  though  sad- 
dening eye,  he  3ould  not  but  perceive  that  a  long  dark  cloud, 
murky  as  the  smoke  of  hell,  lay  along  the  generations  of  men ; 
that  the  shouts  of  riot  and  reveling  might  rise  above  it,  and 
gleams  of  wild  mirth  break  through,  but  that,  in  general,  it 
formed  the  fitting  canopy  of  the  lazar-house,  the  scaffold,  and 
the  battle-field.  The  time  when  tyranny  and  misery  were  to 
sink  into  a  common  grave,  he  was  compelled  to  allow,  had 
not  yet  come.  He  awoke  startled  from  his  dream  of  Eden, 
as  at  the  flash  of  the  cherubic  swords.  But  how  did  he  act  1 
Terror-stricken  like  a  nervous  child,  at  the  shouts  of  blasphemy 
and  the  deluge  of  blood,  did  he  tremble,  and  shriek,  and  rush 
back  into  the  arms  of  the  nurse,  into  old  Toryism,  and  the 
worship  of  "  whatever  king  doth  reign  ?"  Having  looked 
long  on  the  mountain,  did  he  conclude  no  Moses  would  ever 
emerge,  and  bow  down  to  the  golden  calf  of  despotism  ?  No. 
He  took  a  position  worthy  of  a  man  who  could  look  deliber- 
ately and  choose  firmly  ;  who  could  hear  above  the  dinning 
present,  the  great  voices  of  all  time ;  a  far  truer  position  than 
many  great  men  of  his  and  our  time.  It  was  manlier  than 
Southey's,  saner  than  Shelley's,  more  stable  and  honest  than 
Byron's.  He  held  by  the  great  fact  that,  however  defaced, 
however  distorted,  however  contaminated,  freedom  is  in  es- 
sence eternally  noble  ;  and  by  the  kindred  fact  that  despotism, 
however  tempered,  however  embellished,  is  by  nature  poison- 
ous and  vile.  For  the  present,  the  graceful  and  musical  mo- 
tions of  the  free  had  passed  into  the  mad  writhings  and  con- 
vulsi^  e  leapings  of  anarchy.     But  he  did  not  therefore  believe 


330  JOHN     FOSTER. 

the  devil's  elaborate  lie,  that,  because  he  had  power  to  bring 
evil  out  of  good,  it  was  a  right  and  hopeful  attempt  to  bring 
good  out  of  essential  evil. 

"Lord  of  unceasing  love, 
From  everlasting  Thou !  we  shall  not  die. 
These,  even  these,  in  mercy  didst  Thou  form, 
Teachers  of  Good  through  Evil,  by  brief  wrong 
Making  Truth  lovely,  and  her  future  might 
Magnetic  o'er  the  fix'd  untrembling  heart." 

We  can  scarce  conceive  a  more  striking  or  conclusive  proof 
of  the  soundness  and  unimpaired  vigor  of  Foster's  intellect, 
after  having  brought  his  reason  reverently  to  accept  "  incredi- 
bilities," than  is  afforded  by  the  fact  that,  afcer  the  fierce  re- 
vulsion in  his  ideas  caused  by  the  French  Revolution,  he  still 
held,  and  continued  with  unchanging  resolution  during  life  to 
hold,  by  the  standard  of  freedom. 

When  we  come  more  closely  to  survey  Foster's  system  of 
thought,  as  displayed  in  his  writings  and  embodied  in  his  life, 
we  are  met  by  one  great  belief  which  casts  its  shadows  over 
the  whole.  This  is  the  belief  in  man's  depravity.  Human 
iniquity,  wherever  he  looked,  seemed  to  pollute  all,  to  pervert 
all.  There  is  a  certain  gloomy  sublimity  in  his  tearful  gaze 
along  the  centuries.  Where  his  eye  falls,  all  seems  to  become 
dark.  As  a  storm  in  the  high  Alps  has  been  observed  to  husli 
the  songs  of  the  birds,  and  cast  every  gleaming  point  into 
shade,  so  earth's  boasted  virtue  and  grandeur  faded  before  the 
look  of  Foster.  You  pointed  him  to  the  great  and  good  of 
the  past,  the  wise  and  heroic,  whose  names  are  the  pride  of 
nations:  These,  he  said,  were  but  the  mountain-peaks,  that 
rose,  few  and  solitary,  into  the  sunlight,  while  a  world  of 
ignorance,  virretchedness,  and   crime,  weltered  below.     You 


JOHN     FOSTER.  331 

told  him  of  the  literary  master-pieces  of  bygone  ages,  of  sub- 
lime thoughts  set  in  the  perennial  jewelry  of  poetic  beauty : 
These,  he  replied,  were  flowers,  for  the  most  part  gaudy  and 
ungraceful,  growing  on  a  putrid  mass.  You  spoke  of  the  be- 
nign agencies  which  have  been  at  work  and  are  still  at  work 
on  man ;  of  the  powers  of  science,  of  the  refinements  of  litera- 
ture, of  the  gentle  rain  of  education  in  the  atmosphere  of  earth, 
and  the  sunlight  of  religion  coming  down  from  heaven :  a  sad 
smile  passed  over  his  features  as  he  deeply  muttered.  There  is 
a  power  in  man's  heart,  when  blown  upon  by  the  devil,  to 
transform  all  these  into  "the  sublime  mechanics  of  de- 
pravity !" 

This  fearful  thought  was  ever  present  with  Foster,  and  was 
ever  a  fountain  of  woe.  The  sovereign  power  in  man's  nature 
he  saw  to  have  been  dethroned,  man's  crown  had  fallen  from 
his  head,  man's  moral  gravitation  to  the  center  of  the  universe 
had  been  mysteriously  broken.  He  looked  upon  sin  simply 
as  an  evil,  an  incalculable  evil.  We  think  he  was  right.  We 
deem  it  inconsiderate  and  indicative  of  a  want  of  sober  and 
careful  reflection,  to  indulge  in  expressions  regarding  our  fallen 
state  such  as  are  met  with  in  the  present  day.  The  indi\adual 
and  distinctive  nature  of  sin  seems  to  us  to  be  lost  sight  of. 
It  is  spoken  of  as  mere  imperfection,  as  little  more  than  wha-t 
aflbrds  an  opportunity  or  a  battle-field  for  goodness.  Whereas 
it  seems  plain  that  its  peculiar  nature  arises  from  its  connection 
with  a  free,  willing  being,  as  related  to  a  supreme  Father,  tha-t 
it  is  inextricably  intertwined  with  the  idea  of  personality,  and 
that  its  least  speck  is  in  an  essential  and  unqualified  sense  vile. 
The  supposition  of  sin's  existence  in  any  world  of  God's  crea- 
tion besides  our  own,  was  to  Foster  an  idea  of  acute  pain ; 
and  we  confess  we  sympathize  with  him.  We  disagree  with  a 
brilliant  and  able  but  somewhat  incautious  writer  of  the  day, 


332  JOHN     FOSTER. 

in  his  remarks  on  this  part  of  Foster's  views.  We  hope  there 
is  sublimer  employment  to  be  found  in  the  universe  than  bat- 
tling to  the  death  with  the  devil  and  his  angels.  It  is  unsafe 
to  familiarize  ourselves  with  the  idea  that  sin  came  into  God's 
creation  for  its  decoration.  From  eternity  to  eternity,  from 
world  to  world,  sin  was  Is,  and  will  be — damnable.  There  is, 
indeed,  a  sublime  aspect  of  its  connection  with  man's  destiny, 
which  we  have  not  failed  to  discern,  nor  assuredly  did  Foster ; 
it  is  a  sublime  office  to  battle  for  light,  were  it  in  a  world  that 
quivered  on  the  smoke  of  hell ;  let  us  not  shrink  from  the 
combat !  But  we  dare  not  forget  that  what  we  struggle  against 
is  eternally  vile,  and  that  there  is  no  sublimity,  but  endless 
shame,  worthy  of  an  agony  to  freeze  our  very  tears,  in  much 
that  it  has  entailed  on  humanity.  Is  there  any  sublimity  in 
the  fact,  that  a  man  can  not  grasp  the  hand  of  his  brother 
without  the  possibility  of  its  one  day  striking  a  dagger  to  his 
heart  1  Why  is  it  that  the  smile,  and  the  complacent  gesture, 
and  the  softly-tuned  word,  and  all  those  dear  emblems  of  kind- 
ness which  shed  a  lingering  starlight  over  life,  can  be  mimicked, 
and  debased,  and  turned  into  the  dead  paint  of  what  is  called 
politeness  and  etiquette,  to  hide  the  sepulchral  rottenness  of 
false  hearts'?  When  the  friend  you  have  loved  for  years 
turns  treacherously  against  you  for  gold,  is  there  sublimity  in 
the  fact  ?  Is  it  not  the  agony  of  infinite  shame  that  rises  in  our 
bosoms,  as  we  read  that  the  mode  of  expression  which  nature 
has  given  for  the  last  speechless  tenderness  of  love,  was  that 
by  which  a  Judas  betrayed  a  Jesus  ?  Wander  through  the 
dreary  vistas  of  time :  look  into  the  caverns  of  the  Inquisition : 
see  the  flames  encircling  that  queenly  maiden  of  eighteen  who 
had  rescued  her  country ;  gaze  into  the  swollen  eyes  of  the 
beautiful  Beatrice  Cenci;  stand  by  the  scaffold  of  Leonora 
Schcening:  then  tell  us  of  the  sublimity  of  man's  destiny. 


JOHN    FOSTER.  333 

Look  at  that  streak  of  hell-born  slime,  foul  and  inexpungeable, 
darker  than  mist  or  rain-cloud  on  the  purity  of  Mont  Blanc, 
which  blackens  the  lofty  snow  of  Bacon's  brow,  and  then  speak 
of  the  sublimity  of  man's  destiny.  Worst,  far  worst  of  all,  why 
is  it  that  in  our  own  hearts  a  hellish  venom  lurks  ?  The  ex- 
ternal battle  were  slight,  if  it  were  all.  But  it  is  not  so.  Why 
is  it  that  we  feel  the  suggestion  of  generosity  ever  cramped  by 
some  small  insinuation  of  self?  Why  is  it  that  only  at  rarest 
moments  we  can  rise  to  the  feelings  of  noblest  friendship  with 
man,  or  devotion  to  God  ?  Why  is  it  that,  unless  we  are  ut- 
terly lost  to  nobleness,  or  utterly  blind  to  our  own  state,  we 
are  so  often  "  replenished  with  contempt  f  Sin  has  done  all 
this.  We  have  heard  enough  of  sublimity ;  we  must  change 
our  tone  a  little.  Not  death  alone,  and  pain,  and  disease,  has 
this  hellish  agency  brought  along  with  it ;  but  as  it  were  the 
very  rottenness  and  repulsive  horror  of  death;  ingratitude, 
cowardice,  sloth,  uncleanness,  treachery.  Sin  is  the  blackness 
of  all  light,  the  defilement  of  all  purity,  the  all-embracing  for- 
mula for  what  is  ignoble.  We  shall  still  have  self  denial  and 
nobleness  enough  to  hope  that  our  poor  world  is  the  only 
tainted  spot  in  the  universe  of  God. 

Foster's  intense  conception  of  sin  is  the  key  to  much  in  his 
system  of  thought.     This  we  shall  fmd  as  we  proceed. 

We  have  seen  that  his  ultimate  belief  was  that  which  is 
commonly  designated  Calvinism.  But  there  was  one  point  on 
which  he  rejected  its  dogma ;  he  never  believed  in  the  eternity 
of  hell  torments.  There  are  few  passages  in  literature  more 
profoundly  interesting,  than  the  long  letter  in  which  he  details 
his  belief  and  its  grounds  on  this  solemn  subject:  of  all  the 
writings  of  Foster  it  is  that  which  at  once  reveals  to  us  most 
of  his  character,  and  draws  our  heart  toward  him  with  the 
tenderest  feelings  of  affection. 


334  JOHN     FOSTER. 

The  source  of  his  belief  here  was  twofold :  the  eye-to-eye 
vividness  with  which  h.s  imagination  painted  before  him  the 
horrors  of  eternal  destruction,  and  the  trembling  sensibility 
with  which  he  looked  upon  any  fellow-creature  in  pain.  We 
see  both  of  these  in  the  following  brief  extract ;  it  seems  to  us 
inexpressibly  touching  : — "  It  often  surprises  me  that  the  fear- 
ful doctrine  sits,  if  I  may  so  express  it,  so  easy  on  the  minds 
of  the  religious  and  benevolent  believers  of  it.  Surrounded 
immediately  by  the  multitudes  of  fellow-mortals,  and  looking 
abroad  on  the  present,  and  back  on  the  past  state  of  the  race, 
and  regarding  them,  as  to  the  immense  majority,  as  subjects 
of  so  direful  destination,  how  can  they  have  any  calm  enjoy- 
ment of  life,  how  can  they  even  be  cordially  cheerful,  how  can 
they  escape  the  incessant  haunting  of  dismal  ideas,  darkening 
the  economy  in  which  their  lot  is  cast  ?  I  remember  suggest- 
ing to  one  of  them  such  an  image  as  this : — Suppose  the  case 
to  be  that  he  knew  so  many  were  all  doomed  to  sufier,  by  penal 
infliction,  a  death  by  torture,  in  the  most  protracted  agony, 
with  what  feelings  would  he  look  on  the  populous  city,  the 
swarming  country,  or  even  a  crowded,  mixed  congregation  % 
But  what  an  infinitesimal  trifle  that  would  be,  in  comparison 
with  what  he  does  believe  in  looking  on  these  multitudes. 
How,  then,  can  they  bear  the  sight  of  the  living  world  around 
themr 

Eead  these  words,  and  judge  of  the  heart  of  Foster.  With 
what  a  trembling,  earnest  hand,  did  he  trace  them  !  What  a 
world  of  tender  emotion,  of  mild  but  intense  human  sympa- 
thy, of  deepest  love,  is  shown  here!  And  how  beautiful, 
though  sad,  is  the  simplicity  that  breathes  through  the  pass- 
age !  In  perfect  unconsciousness  he  writes,  all  unthinking  of 
the  rugged  bosoms  of  his  fellow-men,  forgetful  that  each  has 
his  own  little  circle  of  work,  with  its  own  little  circle  of  dust, 


JOHN     FOSTER.  335 

encompassing  it  and  him  and  very  much  shutting  out  the  rest 
of  the  world.  Of  a  thousand  men,  probably  not  one  has  any 
definite  conception  of  what  the  common  belief  implies.  The 
imagination  is  too  dull  to  conceive  it,  the  heart  is  too  hard  to 
feel  it.  But  Foster's  intense  conceptive  power  led  him  in 
thought  into  the  very  bosom  of  hell ;  there  he  saw  human  eyes 
fixed  in  the  agony  of  eternal  despair,  there  he  listened  to  the  end- 
less, hopeless  wailings  of  his  brethren ;  and  his  heart  was  steeled 
by  no  hard  worldliness,  by  no  wild  fanaticism,  to  sympathy  with 
their  woes  ;  he  seemed  to  feel  that,  were  he  himself  among  the 
celestial  bands,  the  knowledge  that  those  with  whom  he  had 
once  been  a  fellow-sojourner  were  in  keen  and  everlasting 
anguish,  would  make  him  weep  upon  the  plains  of  heaven. 
He  thought  not  of  himself,  all  his  pain  and  sorrow  came  of 
sympathy.  If  ever  in  the  breast  of  man  there  was  a  heart 
more  tremulously  tender  than  a  woman's  or  a  child's,  that 
heart  was  John  Foster's. 

Such  was  the  source  of  his  belief  respecting  God's  punish- 
ment of  sinners.  The  argument  to  which  he  was  led  can  be 
briefly  summed  up.  After  painting  fearfully  the  horrors  of 
eternal  woe,  he  deliberately  adds  :  "  I  acknowledge  my  inabili- 
ty (I  would  say  it  with  reverence)  to  admit  this  belief,  to- 
gether with  a  belief  in  the  divine  goodness — the  belief  that 
*  God  is  love,'  that  his  tender-mercies  are  over  all  his  works." 
He  did  not  pass  on  to  a  belief  in  immediate  and  promiscuous 
redemption :  "  On  no  allowable  interpretation  do  they"  (the 
words  of  Scripture  on  the  subject)  "  signify  less  than  a  very 
protracted  duration,  and  a  formidable  severity." 

The  above  may  fairly  be  said  to  be  Foster's  one  argument ; 
the  aids  he  seeks  from  Scripture  to  his  views  are,  at  best,  but 
attempts  to  open  a  path  to  a  possible  warrant  on  its  part. 
And,  m  truth,  it  seems  to  us  well-nigh  the  only  argument  of 


336  JOHN     FOSTER. 

strength  which  can  be  urged  on  that  side.  Let  it  not,  how 
ever,  be  thought  that  we  therefore  deem  the  position  of  those 
who  adduce  it  weak.  We  consider  it  not  only  strong,  but,  in 
one  point  of  view,  absolutely  unassailable.  If  John  Foster,  or 
any  man,  deliberately  and  honestly  conceive  it  irreconcilable 
with  infinite  love  that  God  should  condemn  the  wicked  to 
everlasting  punishment,  we  see  not  how  he  can  accept  the  fac* 
without  blasphemy.  If  a  man's  reason,  gazing  earnestly  and 
reverently,  with  lively  consciousness  of  its  own  faint  and  glim- 
mering vision,  and  full  thought  of  the  compass  and  might  of 
infinite  love  guiding  infinite  power,  is  yet  unable,  we  say  not 
to  justify,  but  to  believe  in  the  possible  justice  of  eternal  tor- 
ments, we  see  not  how  he  can  accept  the  doctrine ;  it  is  not 
lawful  for  any  man,  taking  the  sentence,  "  God  is  love,"  to  use 
it  as  a  fiery  rod,  though  it  were  of  celestial  gold,  wherewith  to 
sear  the  eyeballs  of  his  reason.  One  man,  considering  long, 
and  searching  Scripture,  can,  with  no  outrage  on  his  moral  be- 
ing, embrace  in  one  view  the  courts  of  eternal  joy  and  the 
prison  of  eternal  darkness,  and  believe  unconstrainedly  that 
the  King  who  sits  over  both  is  Love ;  such  an  one,  we  be- 
lieve, was  Jonathan  Edwards.  But  another  man  can  not  do 
so ;  and  if  he  is  as  honest  and  reverent  as  the  last,  who  is 
there  on  earth  than  can  accuse  him  ?  Deeply  and  solemnly 
earnest  was  Eoster ;  we  seem  to  see  a  dark  cloud  laboring 
along  that  letter,  dropping  tears  on  its  way.  We  can  not  sub- 
scribe to  his  belief  on  the  point ;  we  think  his  view  was  some- 
what contracted,  and  that,  by  a  more  mature  consideration  of 
what  is  revealed  to  us  of  God's  dealings  and  designs  in  the 
creation  of  man,  and  a  warrantable  though  careful  borrowing 
of  light  from  other  quarters,  it  might  have  undergone  import- 
ant and  advantageous  change  ;  but  how,  with  his  premises,  he 
could  avoid  his  conclusion,  we  can  not  see. 


JOHN     FOSTER.  337 

We  arc  not  called  upon  here  to  discuss  fully,  or  even  to 
enter  upon  this  stupendous  subject.  So  profoundly  difficult 
does  the  whole  question  of  eternal  punishment  appear  to  us, 
and  so  intimately  allied  with  a  series  of  questions  that  have 
baffled,  and  surely  will  for  ever  baffle,  human  reason,  that 
there  is.  perhaps,  no  conceivable  case  in  which  we  would  more 
carefully  avoid  peremptory  or  upbraiding  dogmatism.  Poor 
finite  beings,  treating  such  a  question,  may  well  bear  with 
each  other ! 

We  do  no  more  at  present  than  offer  a  general  and  prelim- 
inary remark,  defining,  in  some  measure,  the  conditions  of  the 
question,  and  indicating  what  every  man,  in  coming  to  a  de- 
cision regarding  it,  has,  so  to  speak,  to  take  along  with  him. 

In  a  volume  of  sermons,  published  some  time  since  by  Mr. 
Theodore  Parker,  of  America,  we  find  the  matter  treated  in 
the  follow^ing  ofi*-hand,  easy  manner : — "  You  look  on  the  base 
and  wicked  men  who  seem  as  worms  in  the  mire  of  civiliza- 
tion, often  delighting  to  bite  and  to  devour  one  another,  and 
you  remark  that  these  also  are  the  children  of  God  ;  that  He 
loves  each  of  them,  and  wdll  sufi*er  no  ancient  Judas,  nor 
modern  kidnapper,  to  perish ;  that  there  is  no  child  of  perdi- 
tion in  all  the  family  of  God,  but  He  will  lead  home  his  sinner 
and  his  saint,  and  such  as  are  sick  with  the  leprosy  of  their 
wickedness,  '  the  murrain  of  beasts,'  bowed  down  and  not  able 
to  lift  themselves  up,  He  will  carry  in  his  arms !" 

Is  it  possible  to  believe  that  there  is  not  in  this  something 
essentially  wrong  ^  Is  the  subject,  then,  after  all,  one  of  such 
wayside  plainness,  such  clear,  and  absolute,  and  sunny  sim- 
plicity 1  Are  the  clouds  and  thick  darkness  that  have  from 
the  olden  time  mysteriously  vailed  the  future,  and  cast  their 
shade  over  such  intellects  as  those  of  Luther,  Calvin,  Leibnitz, 
Pascal,  and  Jonathan  Edwards,  to  roll  away  before  such  a  soft 

15 


S38  JOHN     FOSTER. 

summer  gale  of  sentimentality  as  tliis  ?  We  can  rK)t  believe 
it.  We  can  scarce  conceive  aught  more  diametrically  opposed 
to  the  mightiest  instincts  that  have  swayed  nations,  and  the 
most  earnest  beliefs  which  have  been  arrived  at  by  great  indi- 
vidual thinkers.  What  real  thinker  has  there  been,  from 
Plato  to  Dante,  from  Dante  to  Calvin,  and  from  Calvin,  we 
shall  add,  to  Carlyle,  who  has  not  recognized  something  un- 
speakably stern,  something  to  create  a  solemn  awe,  in  the  gen- 
eral structure  and  relations  of  this  universe  1  Were  nature 
all  sunny  and  cloudless ;  were  the  sea  at  all  times  glassy  and 
still,  or  the  pathway  only  of  the  spiced  and  gentle  wind,  lead- 
ing along  the  white  sail  as  if  it  were  an  inflmt  of  Ocean ;  were 
there  only  soft  flowery  lawns  and  May  mornings,  and  no  vol- 
canoes or  avalanches ;  were  there  but  the  smiles  of  birth-day 
and  of  bridal  upon  human  faces,  no  furrov.^  traced  by  tears,  no 
wrinkle  writ  by  age,  no  shadow  cast  by  coming  death ;  were 
human  history  one  joyous  chime,  ascending  from  the  green 
earth  to  meet  and  mingle  with  the  angels'  music,  broken  by  no 
wailings  or  sorrow,  no  shrieks  and  groans  of  battle ;  had  the 
slopes  of  Olivet  been  ever  mantled  with  the  vine,  and  rung 
only  to  the  song  of  the  vintage,  and  never  seen  tiie  crosses  by 
thousands  in  the  gray  morning ;  did  the  human  eye,  as  years 
go  on,  gather  brightness,  and  beam  with  ever  a  clearer  and 
prouder  gladness,  and  were  it  not  a  fact  that  the  eye  of  every 
man  or  woman'^of  well  advanced  years,  has  one  expression 
giving  tone  to  the  others,  vanishing,  it  may  be,  for  an  hour, 
but  always  returning,  and  that  an  expression  of  sorrow  :  then 
might  we  have  heart  to  join  Mr.  Parker  in  his  soft  and  child- 
like strain.  But  whenever  we  would  assay  to  do  so,  we  see 
ourselves  confronted  by  immovable  facts,  by  this  one  great 
fact — MISERY ;  and  our  tongue  cleaves  to  the  roof  of  our 
mouth.     Has  it  been  all  a  mistake,  then,  by  which  men  have 


JOHN     FOSTER.  339 

ever  regarded  death  as  dark  and  calamitous,  and  its  infliction 
the  severest  form  of  punishment  1  What  means  tlie  smoke 
of  those  sacrifices  rising  from  every  nation  on  earth  to  an 
angry  deity  1  Who  put  that  word  into  the  mouth  of  con- 
science, giving,  along  with  it,  a  power  to  compel  all  men  to 
listen,  which  declares  and  has  ever  declared  man  responsible 
and  the  sinner  in  danger  ?  Surely  the  assertion  that  these 
phenomena  have  reference  solely  to  the  inconveniences  en- 
tailed on  the  sinner  in  this  life,  requires  no  refutation.  God 
has  not  averted  the  painful  effects  of  sin  in  this  world  ;  He  let 
Judas  go  to  his  despairing  death,  and  a  devil  even  on  earth 
gnawed  the  heart  of  Saul ;  by  what  argument,  then,  can  we 
conclude  that  He  will  totally  avert  the  effects  of  sin  in  the 
next,  and  place  Judas  and  Stephen  alike  within  the  light  of  His 
throne  1  "  Infinite  pity  yet  also  infinite  rigor  of  law  :  it  is  so 
nature  is  made  ;  it  is  so  Dante  discerned  that  she  was  made." 
These  are  the  words  of  Mr.  Carlyle. 

We  have  already  referred  to  the  prevalent  assertion  of  Fos- 
ter's misanthropy.  We  boldly  denied  it,  and  ventured  the 
affirmation  that  his  heart  was  tenderly  kind.  We  think  this 
will  now  be  agreed  to ;  the  words  he  uttered  regarding  eternal 
punishment  put  it  beyond  further  question.  But  it  still  admits 
of  dispute  whether  he  did  not  take  a  morbidly  gloomy  view 
of  human  affairs — whether,  though  personally  of  tender  kind- 
liness, he  may  not  yet,  as  a  public  teacher,  be  rightfully  desig- 
nated a  misanthrope.  Most  of  the  ideas  abroad  regardmg  him 
have  it  for  their  basis  that  he  was  such ;  and  even  m  a  noted 
disquisition  upon  his  character,  we  find  it  sententiously  stated 
that  his  tenderest  emotions  were  acts  of  ratiocination.  Per- 
haps precisely  the  most  important  lesson  he  conveyed  to  his 
age  may  be  brought  to  light  by  inquiring  into  the  truth  of 
such  statements. 


340  JOHN     FOSTER. 

Foster's  tremulous  sensibi  lity,  and  his  vivid  and  sleepless 
imagination,  gave  him  what  we  may  call  a  perpetual  conscious- 
ness of  human  misery.  The  misanthrope  says  men  are  bad, 
worthy  to  be  hated,  and  deserving  their  sorrow  ;  Foster  also 
said  men  were  bad,  but  he  heard  love  whispering  that  they 
were  weak,  and  hatred  for  their  sin  was  drowned  in  pity  for 
their  suffering. 

"  Never  morning  wore 
To  evening,  but  some  heart  did  break ;" 

and  he  seemed  to  hear  it  break.  Do  we  not,  as  may  be  worth 
noting  as  we  pass,  see  so  much  in  his  portrait  1  Is  not  the 
expression  which  gives  it  tone  that  of  tender,  yearning  affec- 
tion 1  Sorrow  and  misgiying  are  in  the  eye,  but  they  seem  to 
float  in  pity  and  love.  There  is  something  of  trouble  in  the 
earnest,  inquiring  glance,  telling  of  long  pondering  and  of  a 
high  curiosity  not  to  be  satisfied,  but  there  is  neither  indigna- 
tion nor  disdain.  If  the  lip  is  faintly  curled,  it  is  not  with  con- 
tempt ;  it  seems  to  tremble  w^ith  a  sad  and  extorted  confession, 
that  human  effort  is  all  but  vain  in  assuaging  human  woe.  As 
we  look,  are  we  not  vividly  reminded  of  the  lines  by  Keats — 

"  Anxious,  pitying  eyes. 
As  if  he  always  listen'd  to  the  sighs 
Of  the  goaded  world?" 

These  words  are  precisely  descriptive  of  Foster's  habitual  cast 
of  mind.  His  face  is  not  hopeful,  it  is  not  joyous  ;  but  if  one 
emotion  is  absent,  it  is  that  of  contemptuous  hatred,  and  if  one 
is  present,  it  is  that  of  scarcely  hoping  love. 

Foster  was  a  stern  teacher.  Looking,  with  penetrative  vis- 
ion, over  human  history,  and  entering  by  imaginative  power 
into  every  scene  and  region  of  misery — looking  on  ancient 
history,  and  seeing,  "  by  its  faint  glimmer,"  that  it  had  been 


JOHN    FOSTER.  341 

"  an  ocean  of  blood" — and  marking  how,  in  modern  times,  even 
the  celestial  light  of  Christianity  had  but  fliintly  and  fitfully 
irradiated  the  gloom  of  earth — he  turned  round,  with  the 
austerity  of  earnestness  and  the  sadness  of  love,  and  pro- 
claimed, in  solemn  accents,  that  the  world  was  no  joyful  gar- 
den, but  a  sterile  desert,  its  wells  few,  its  palm-trees  flided, 
and  resting,  as  under  a  sky  of  iron,  beneath  the  curse.  Let 
the  shout  of  triumph,  he  said,  die  away  :  brethren,  these  are  no 
cool  tranquil  lakes,  these  towers  and  palaces  are  not  of  pearl 
and  gold ;  these  are  but  the  mockeries  of  our  sorrow,  no  man 
of  heart  will  look  upon  them ;  beneath  our  feet  is  burning 
sand,  and  it  is  manful  to  know  it ;  only  on  the  far  hoinzon 
gleams  the  serene  light  of  our  home.  Gloomy,  misanthropic, 
only  half  the  truth,  say  a  thousand ;  alas,  it  is  too  near  the 
whole  truth,  and  of  it  we  must  be  at  times  reminded.  Easy 
it  is  to  paint  your  world  ;  so  infinitely  easier,  as  has,  we*think, 
been  remarked,  to  paint  it  an  inch  deep,  than  to  amend  it  by 
a  hair's-breadth.  Heroism,  virtue,  domestic  joys,  rural  bliss, 
the  progress  of  the  species,  the  sway  of  love,  liberty,  equality, 
and  fraternity  ; — do  you  think  Foster  had  not  heard  of  these  1 
Yes,  and  for  a  time  he  listened  earnestly,  if  perhaps  there 
might  be  any  healing  there ;  and  even  when  disappointed,  he 
held  to  the  truth  they  shadowed.  But  how  did  his  strong 
heart  respond  to  the  general  advocates  of  freedom  in  our  day  1 
How  did  Enceladus  greet  the  soft  frivolous  accents  of  the  gentle 
Clymene,  who  lisped  her  comforting  syllables  to  the  Titans "? 

"Not  thunderbolt  on  thunderbolt,  till  all 
That  rebel  Jove's  whole  armory  was  spent ; 
Not  world  on  world  upon  these  shoulders  piled, 
Could  agonize  me  more  than  baby-words 
In  midst  of  this  dethronement  horrible.*' 

There  are  few  if  any  spectacles  afforded  by  our  earth  more 


342  JOHN     FOSTER. 

noble  in  their  sadness  than  this  first  which  we  find  presented 
by  Foster,  and  misnamed  misanthropy.  It  is  the  spectacle  of 
a  man  who  looks  over  the  ranks  of  his  brothers  as  they  wend 
mournfully  through  time,  who  feels  a  sorrow  deeper  than  words, 
striving  upward  to  his  eye  to  pour  itself  forth,  but  who  yet 
sternly  crushes  down  the  "climbing  agony,"  and  compels  his 
tears  to  burn  only  in  his  heart,  lest  they  film  his  eye,  and  pre- 
vent the  earnest  glance  of  thought  from  piercing  into  the  evil. 
This,  too,  is  among  the  duties  of  man ;  to  stand,  like  a  kind 
physician,  beside  the  writhing  patient,  mankind,  and,  while 
listening  to  the  groans,  to  mete  the  extent  and  virulence  of 
the  distemper,  and,  it  may  be,  apply  some  remedy  which  will 
for  the  time  increase  the  plaining.  A  man  on  earth  may  have 
too  much  love  to  weep  ! 

The  duty  of  man,  as  man,  is  thought.  This  is  his  distinctive 
regal  ^uty.  Pity  and  love  may  aid  and  cheer  him,  but,  as 
sovereign  worker  in  this  world,  his  duty  is  governance,  guid- 
ance— in  one  word,  thought.  And  in  order  to  this,  he  must, 
with  a  valiant  calmness,  know  in  all  cases  the  worst. 

"  To  bear  all  naked  truths, 
And  to  envisage  circumstance  all  calm — 
That  is  the  top  of  sovereignty." 

No  man  is  qualified  to  be  a  public  guide  or  instructor  of  men, 
who  can  not  more  or  less  do  this ;  and  a  man  generally  is  mighty 
in  proportion  as  he  can  do  it,  and  has  a  love  strong  enough  to 
dare  it. 

But  there  is  another  aspect  in  which  to  regard  Foster's 
gloomy  representations  of  the  human  state  and  prospects.  His 
position  was  twofold :  in  one  point  of  view,  it  resembled  that 
of  the  misanthrope;  in  another,  it  was  diametrically  opposed 
thereto.     He  declared  the  work  to  be  stem,  the  battle  to  be  a 


JOHN     FOSTER.  343 

reality.  But  he  held  earnestly  by  his  standard,  he  never 
flinched  work.  Hear  this  grand  sentiment  from  his  lips  : — "All 
that  pass  from  this  world  must  present  themselves  as  from 
battle,  or  be  denied  to  mingle  in  the  eternal  joys  and  triumphs 
of  the  conquerors."  We  know  that  he  was  tenderly  kind,  and 
he  never  for  a  moment  flinched  from  the  combat.  Tliis  union 
absolutely  negatives  misanthropy,  and  the  general  notion  which 
attributes  such  to  Foster  must  be  dissipated.  He  was  a  prac- 
tical living  enforcement,  with  a  new  and  peculiar  energy,  of 
the  great  lesson  that  every  man  must  work.  However  dark 
the  aspect  of  the  field,  though  no  higher  hope  exists  for  you 
than  to  lie  cold  and  stiff  while  your  brethren  go  on  to  victory, 
yet  you  must  fight  on.  Comparatively  easy  it  is  to  struggle 
when  our  hope  is  bright,  although  this  also  is  noble  ;  but  far 
more  difficult  is  it,  to  know  all  the  hazards  and  toils  of  the 
combat,  to  see  no  prospect  that  our  individual  might  will  per- 
ceptibly avail,  and  yet  to  keep  the  sword  unbared,  and  never 
dream  of  returning  it  to  the  scabbard.  This  is  that  high  form 
of  virtue  which  is  missed  by  the  real  misanthrope ;  and  it 
Foster  attained.  Whoso  fully  comprehends  his  whole  position 
here,  has  understood  his  life  :  here,  we  think,  lies  the  problem 
of  his  biography.  We  shall  call  this  gloom,  then,  of  which  we 
have  heard  so  much,  a  right  noble,  a  sublime  melancholy.  In 
the  strength  of  youth,  as  we  have  seen,  his  hopes  had  been 
high ;  his  eye  had  caught  the  distant  gleaming  of  paradaisal 
fields  ;  he  had  seemed  to  hear  the  sound  of  millennial  anthems  ; 
his  heart  had  swelled  high  with  emotion ;  he  had  shouted 
for  the  battle.  But  he  soon  paused  in  astonished  sadness.  It 
was  as  if  a  seraph  had  seen  from  afar  the  new  smile  of  our 
planet  among  the  stars  of  God,  and  had  come  through  the  azure 
to  hear  the  notes  of  its  new  hymn  of  praise,  and  had  landed 
on  its  golden  margin,  and  been  confronted  by — sin.     The  sor 


344  JOHN    FOSTER. 

row  that  was  in  Foster's  eye  had  been  known  hy  the  noblest 
of  earth.  It  was  that  sadness  which  shaded  the  brow  of  Plato ; 
such  sadness  was  in  the  heart  of  Solomon  when  he  said  that 
much  wisdom  was  much  grief. 

We  say  not  such  sorrow  as  this  is  absolutely  required  of  us, 
nor  certainly  ought  it  to  darken  the  whole  character.  With 
all  her  sternness,  nature  has  appointed  feelings  of  mirth  to  play 
over  the  dark  places  of  our  lot.  A  stern  mother  she  is,  a 
stern  destiny  is  ours  :  but  sometimes,  nevertheless,  she  does 
take  her  children  in  her  arms  and  smile  on  and  kiss  them ; 
she  does  intend  us  to  yield  at  times  to  glad  impulses,  to  leave 
our  brooding,  to  look  at  the  sunny  side  of  the  cloud.  It  is  a 
fact  that,  at  every  moment,  bitter  tears  are  furrowing  human 
faces  ;  it  is  a  fact  that,  at  every  moment.  Night,  with  her 
shrouding  darkness,  is  closing  over  half  the  world  :  but  it  is 
a  fact  also,  that  at  every  moment,  some  are  smiling ;  at  every 
moment,  somewhere.  Morn  is  scattering  golden  light.  And, 
above  all,  the  Christian  may  be  removed  from  overwhelming 
access  of  grief;  he 

"  "Whose  meditative  sympathies  repose 
Upon  the  breast  of  Faith  ;" 

he  who  can  overarch  all  clouds  and  contradictions  with  an 
infinite  radiance.  But  the  calm  rejoicing  of  the  healthful  and 
balanced  Christian  mind  is  removed  as  far  as  possible  from 
flippancy  or  thoughtless  gayety.  If  our  natures  are  of  the  sunny 
complexion,  let  us  be  glad  and  thankful ;  but  let  us  not  forget 
that  some  of  the  greatest  intellects  of  time  have  looked  sadly 
on  human  affairs,  or  neglect  the  lesson  they  teach.  Of  these 
intellects,  though  not  taking  a  high  rank  among  them,  was 
Foster's.  He  came  near  certain  fatal  influences,  but  he  re- 
mained unscathed  by  all.  He  knew  doubt,  yet  he  was  not 
driven  into  infidelity  ;  he  saw  difficulty,  yet  he  was  not  driven 


JOHN     FOSTER.  346 

into  despair.  He  told  men  that  the  "battle  with  principalities 
and  powers  was  stern  and  long,  and  with  hasty  superficiality 
they  exclaimed  that  he  was  wrapped  in  a  garment  of  mere 
gloom.  lie  shrunk,  in  horror  and  agony,  from  the  baleful 
form  of  sin,  as  he  saw  it  in  the  world  around  him  ;  by  a 
sublime  casting  of  the  mantle  of  his  love  over  the  universe, 
he  yearned  to  shut  out  from  its  rejoicing  borders  that  mortal 
taint,  and  confine  it  to  his  own  blackened  world  ;  and  they 
exclaimed  that  he  was  a  misanthrope  ! 

In  considering  the  works  of  any  powerful  and  sincere  thinker, 
it  is  well  to  give  a  close  attention  to  what  in  them  is  defective 
or  erroneous.  In  tracing  the  line  beyond  which,  by  being 
pressed  too  far,  truth  becomes  of  no  avail,  or  even,  as  extremes 
meet,  rushes  off  to  embrace  error,  we  can  mark  well  the  line- 
aments of  the  truth  itself,  and  comprehend,  more  fully  than 
before,  the  work  done  by  him  whose  writings  we  inspect.  The 
mistakes,  also,  of  a  sincere  man,  and  one  of  great  influence  in 
the  world  of  mind,  are  more  apt  to  obtain  currency  and  pro- 
duce evil,  than  those  of  one  of  slighter  build  :  from  gold  it  is 
worth  while  to  separate  the  clay.  We  therefore  proceed  to 
state  a  few  important  defects  in  Foster's  opinions  and  teaching, 
and  to  endeavor  to  evolve  the  full  truth  in  each  case. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  enunciate  in  general  terms  the  one 
great  want  alike  in  Foster's  powers,  knowledge  and  opinions. 
In  one  word,  he  wanted  completeness.  His  imagination,  pow- 
erful, amazingly  powerful,  to  draw  a  single  figure,  or  a  single 
spectacle,  could  not  produce  a  full  and  harmonized  picture. 
Passages  in  his  works  are,  perhaps,  not  to  be  surpassed  for 
lurid  distinctness,  for  happy  metaphor,  or  for  clear  force  ;  but 
he  could  not  produce  a  complete  book,  or  design  a  complete 
essay,  and  what  Dr.  Cheever  says  of  his  compositions,  that 
they  commence  and  end  by  no  rule,  and  are  governed  by  no 
15* 


346  JOHN    FOSTER. 

principles  of  symmetry,  is  accurately  true.  His  knowledge 
was  various,  and  in  its  separate  parts,  so  far  as  we  can  judge, 
sufficiently  exact ;  but  it  was  fatally  deficient  in  method,  it 
formed  no  complete  system  or  series,  beautiful  to  behold  and 
easily  referred  to  :  it  was  like  a  museum  packed  up  in  the  hold 
of  a  ship.  His  strictly  intellectual  power  and  his  strictly  rea- 
soned opinions  have  the  same  characteristic.  We  are  able  to 
express  in  his  own  words  the  great  fact,  that  "  the  conjunction 
of  truths  is  of  the  utmost  importance  for  preserving  the  genu- 
ine tendency,  and  securing  the  appropriate  efficacy  of  each  ;  " 
yet  his  system  of  opinion  was  by  no  means  symmetrical.  Each 
separate  doctrine  which  he  enforces  has  an  aspect  of  truth,  but 
often  this  aspect,  by  being  made  to  fill  the  field  of  view, 
implies  error.  After  all  his  pondering,  he  had  reached  no 
explaining  theory,  even  of  certain  facts  of  history,  which  can, 
within  limits,  be  accounted  for,  and  whose  allied  good  and  evil 
can  be  discriminated.  The  truth  of  these  general  remarks 
will  become  manifest  as  we  proceed. 

Of  the  meaning  and  function,  in  the  present  stage  of  man's 
history  as  a  species,  of  certain  agencies,  which  must  always,  in 
their  ultimate  relations,  be  regarded  with  sorrow,  but  which 
subserve  important  purposes  in  the  present  dispensation,  Fos- 
ter had  no  clear  conception.  Of  these  agencies,  by  far  the 
most  remarkable  is  war.  If  all  other  arguments  in  proof  of 
the  fact  that  the  species  man  is  fallen  were  swept  away,  the 
one  great  fact  of  war  would  yet,  we  say  not  prove  to  us  the 
fall,  but  render  it  beyond  our  power  to  conceive  a  man  deli- 
berately believing  his  species  still  in  that  state  of  perfection  in 
which  God  created  it.  But  if  war  came  with  sin,  it  came  as 
the  red-hot  iron  comes  with  poison ;  to  scarify  and  blacken, 
but  yet  to  prevent  pain  from  becoming  death.  When  sin  en- 
tered, a  great  severance  took  place ;  right  and  might  parted 


JOHN     FOSTER.  347 

company  One  in  the  bygone  eternity,  again  to  be  one  in  the 
coming  eternity,  in  the  little  vexed  strait  of  time,  tossing  and 
weltering  and  never  at  rest,  which  lies  between  the  two,  they 
severed.  To  say  that  might  and  right  are  one  "  in  the  long 
run,"  is  to  enunciate  what  we  have  just  endeavored  to  express ; 
to  say  might  and  right  are  one  in  time,  traceably  and  exactly 
one  in  human  history  hitherto,  or  to  be  so  ere  the  species  is 
restored  to  its  native  condition,  is  to  deny  that  ever  a  Helot 
was  murdered  or  a  child  oppressed.  When  might  and  right 
become  one.  War  will  embrace  his  armor,  and  lay  down,  and 
die.  But  till  then,  War  has  functions  to  perform.  These 
are  various,  but  perhaps  the  most  important  among  them  is 
this :  either,  in  his  rough  and  rude  manner,  to  vindicate  out- 
raged justice  and  let  the  oppressed  go  free  ;  or,  in  the  blood 
of  these  oppressed  on  the  lost  battle-field,  to  inscribe  a  per- 
petual testimony  to  the  right,  and  a  stern  and  dumb  appeal  to 
Heaven. 

Of  other  agencies,  seemingly  evil,  which  God  makes  to 
praise  Him,  we  shall  not  speak.  How  did  Foster  think  and 
speak  of  war  1  He  looked  over  human  history,  with  a  search- 
ing and  a  loving  eye ;  he  saw  it  followed  by  a  pale  host  of 
woes,  and  moving  through  all  time  to  a  music  of  bitter  wail, 
making  man  its  prey  :  he  broke  into  a  shriek  of  sorrow  and 
indignation,  and  never  went  further  or  altered  his  tone.  Now, 
it  can  not  be  asserted,  in  proof  of  any  man's  being  a  thmker, 
that  he  has  perceived  the  evil  of  war.  Since  themes  began  to 
be  wi'itten  in  academies,  that  was  known  and  discoursed  of. 
Every  school-boy  has  a  set  of  tropes  to  illustrate  it.  But  a 
profound  and  deliberate  thinker  should  see  further.  The  very 
recognition  of  that  great  necessity  at  which  we  have  pointed, 
at  least  in  bygone  ages,  were  enough  to  silence  a  scarce  manly 
and  perpetual  whining  over  the  woes  of  war ;  but  a  concep- 


348  JOHN     FOSTER. 

tion  even  of  this  we  have  not  found  in  Foster,  Much  less  did 
he  see  how  it  has,  in  many  ages,  subserved  other  and  benign 
purposes.  Dear-bought,  indeed,  have  been  the  harvests  which 
its  red  rain  has  made  to  grow,  but  it  has  made  them  grow. 
Look  upon  Europe  at  the  time  of  the  breaking  up  of  the  Eo- 
man  Empire  ;  it  is  a  case  precisely  in  point.  The  appearance 
presented  is  inexpressibly  awful :  one  scene  of  horror,  of  de- 
vastation, of  tumult,  from  the  gates  of  Constantinople  to  the 
pillars  of  Hercules.  How  far  better  had  it  seemed,  how  far 
higher  had  been  the  sentimental  beauty,  if  things  had  continued 
as  they  were,  if  Rome's  soft  licentious  slaves  had  gone  on 
dawdling  and  lolling  till  now.  But  on  that  Europe  God  had 
other  nations  to  be  planted ;  new  blood  had  to  be  introduced ; 
and  the  northern  hordes  came  down,  sword  in  hand.  It  is  an 
undeniable  ethnological  fact,  that,  by  the  agency  of  the  fearful 
war  which  ensued,  by  the  commingling  of  races  resulting  there- 
from, the  puny,  emasculated  subjects  of  Rome  were  exchanged 
for  those  nations,  which  now,  for  more  than  a  thousand  years, 
have  reared  their  mountain-lilce  forms  on  Europe.  This 
is  a  great  fact.  Say,  if  you  will,  that  God  overruled  the 
horrors  of  war  for  the  advancement  of  mankind ;  we,  indeed, 
consider  this  the  most  accurate  mode  of  expressing  the 
fact :  but  learn  to  discern  the  mode  in  which  He  does  over- 
rule it,  and  say  not  that  the  devil  alone  had  a  hand  in  the 
matter. 

Often  amid  the  shakings  of  the  nations,  when  men's  hearts 
were  failing  them  for  fear,  and  in  the  bosoms  of  all  the  noble 
there  was  a  speechless  yearning  for  rest,  God's  Providence  has 
been  at  work,  the  cloud  seeming  to  vail  love  has  been  "  itself 
love,"  in  the  course  of  centuries  the  light  of  that  love  has 
beamed  out  perceptibly  to  all.  What  a  profound  significance 
now  attaches  to  the  following  words  of  Milton,  uttered  in  re- 


JOHN     FOSTER.  349 

ferencc  to  that  tumultuous  time  when  "  faithfu:  and  free-born 
Englishmen  and  good  Christians"  were  driven  in  multitudes 
from  home  and  country,  to  seek  shelter  in  "  the  wide  ocean 
and  the  savage  deserts  of  America  :" — "  Oh,  sir,  if  we  could 
but  see  the  shape  of  our  dear  mother  England,  as  poets  are 
wont  to  give  a  personal  form  to  what  they  please,  how  would 
she  appear,  think  ye,  but  in  a  mourning  weed,  with  ashes  upon 
her  head,  and  tears  abundantly  flowing  from  her  eyes." 
Were  the  eye  of  John  Milton  now  to  rekindle  in  its  dry 
socket,  what  a  gleam  of  glory  would  flash  from  it,  as  he  gazed 
over  to  the  "  savage  deserts  of  America  !"  How  would  he 
now  robe  in  poetic  life  the  figure  of  England,  looking  to  the 
mighty  nation  to  which  she  gave  birth  in  pains  like  those  of 
dissolution !  How  proudly  would  he  now  regard  the  Island 
mother  and  her  Titan  son,  intrusted  by  God  with  the  high 
commission  of  bearing  the  standard  of  freedom  in  the  front  of 
the  peoples  !  Would  he  not  at  least  bow  his  head  in  wonder- 
ing praise,  and  declare  that,  clearer  and  more  powerful  than 
ever  song  of  bard,  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man,  is  the 
silent  roll  of  the  ages  1 

We  have  said  we  would  speak  only  of  war,  but  there  might 
be  urged  considerations  of  a  nature  somewhat  similar,  to  show 
that  pestilence  and  famine  are  not  unmingled  evils,  that  even 
their  steps  are  watched  of  God.  Nations  spring  again  with 
fresh  vigor  to  their  feet,  after  having  been  cast  down.  Through 
the  branches  of  the  pruned  forest,  rushes  the  stream  of  life 
with  wilder  energy,  and  gushes  forth  in  a  fresh  magnificence 
of  foliage.  No  fact  seems  to  us  more  likely  to  be  soon  un- 
folded to  the  careful  student  of  history,  than  that  after  every 
period  of  winter  has  come  a  period  of  spring. 

With  such  thoughts  as  these,  Foster  had  no  acquaintance- 
He  could  nowise  see  his  way  through  history. 


350  JOHN     FOSTER. 

It  were  foolish  to  conclude,  from  aught  we  have  said  abvve, 
that  we  are  pleaders  for  war,  flimine,  and  pestilence.  We 
know  these  are  doomed,  and  the  sooner  they  go  the  better ; 
they  point  to  a  fearful  chronic  disease  in  the  system  of  human 
affairs ;  in  the  evolution  of  man's  history,  of  God's  plan  in 
man's  creation,  they  will  vanish.  Welcome  shall  science  be, 
with  all  her  mild  methods,  thrice  welcome.  As  war  was  the 
agency  by  ^  aich  a  sufficiently  wide  field  was  prepared  for 
first  planting  the  foundations  of  Christ's  kingdom  on  earth ; 
as  it  was  the  sword  of  Rome  which,  all  unconsciously  of  the 
end  to  be  accomplished,  fitted  the  world  for  Christianity  in  its 
troubled  militant  state ;  we  trust  that,  when  that  kingdom  is 
to  be  fully  established,  and  the  golden  battlements  of  Zion  to 
cover  the  whole  earth,  the  preparing  agencies  will  be  no  longer 
those  of  war,  but  those  of  peace.  But,  meanwhile,  nothing  is 
to  be  gained  from  immature  attempts  or  Utopian  expectations. 
Humanity  is  a  patient  difficult  to  deal  with,  and,  for  our  part, 
we  suspect  the  monster  will  have  to  be  bled  several  times 
yet ;  it  will  bleed  no  longer  than  until  bleeding  ceases  to  be 
a  necessary  agent  of  cure. 

Reflections  such  as  we  have  indicated  are  of  great  moment. 
They  enlarge  our  apprehension  of  the  wisdom  of  God,  and 
show  how  deeply,  yet  unmistakably.  His  designs  penetrate 
the  general  framework  of  things  :  they  foster  a  child-like,  yet 
manful  confidence  in  the  Almighty,  and  hint  audibly,  however 
the  floods  rage,  that  He  sits  King  forever  :  lastly,  and  in  es- 
pecial application  to  our  day,  they  prevent  men  from  fancying, 
as  even  earnest  and  able  men  are  apt  to  do,  that  their  time  is 
the  worst  of  times,  and  that  the  world  is  falling  to  wreck 
around  them.     They  impart 

"That  severe  content 
That  comes  of  thought  and  musing  ;" 


JOHN     FOSTER.  351 

they  might  have  whispered  to  Southey,  Arnold,  and  Carlyle, 
to  possess  their  souls  in  patience.     To  proceed. 

In  all  Foster's  performance  as  a  Christian  instructor,  there 
is  no  circumstance  which  we  regard  with  feelings  of  deeper 
admiratiDn,  than  his  downright  advocacy  of  strict  Christianity 
within  the  courts  of  literature.  lie  will  have  a  Christian  to 
be  one  in  thought,  word,  and  deed  :  he  will  listen  to  no  com- 
promise ;  he  will  hear  of  no  palliation  ;  him  who  is  not  with 
Christ  he  will  declare  to  be  against  Him.  So  far  he  has  our 
warmest  sympathy.  As  the  old  Judaistic  preaching  of  law  is 
obsolete,  so  the  old  philosophic  preaching  of  virtue  is  obso- 
lete ;  law  and  virtue  are  both  embraced,  and,  as  it  were  trans- 
figured, in  the  doctrine  of  Christ  crucified.  But  here,  also,  we 
can  say  with  full  assurance  that  his  view  was  narrow  and  er- 
roneous. He  felt  two  powers  contending  within  him.  Gifted 
by  nature  with  a  fine  sympathy  for  all  that  was  beautiful  and 
elevating,  he  could  not  but  experience  a  thrill  of  richest  enjoy- 
ment when  any  tint  of  real  beauty  met  his  eye,  any  tone  of 
real  beauty  fell  upon  his  ear ;  but  he  had  often  met  such  in 
the  spacious  fields  of  literature,  both  ancient  and  modern, 
where  he  had  extensively  wandered,  and  these  were,  for  the 
most  part,  unchristian  ;  the  sovereign  voice  of  religion  seemed 
to  say,  that  in  these  regions  it  was  sinful  to  expatiate,  and  that 
every  fruit  to  be  plucked  there,  however  clear  and  golden  its 
beauty,  must  be  an  apple  of  Sodom.  He  took  his  determina- 
tion. He  uttered  a  voice  of  warning  and  condemnation.  On 
all  literature  commonly  called  profane  he  laid  his  ban.  How- 
ever pure  the  joy  appeared,  however  distinctly  it  was  from 
inner  and  native  fountains  of  sympathy  that  the  rapture  seemed 
to  flow,  it  was  to  be  curbed,  thwarted,  cast  aside,  if  the  object  of 
beauty  which  evoked  it  was  not  within  some  inclosure  distinctly 
marked  off  for  Christian  purposes.     In  this  we  think  he  erred. 


352  JOHN    FOSTER. 

Two  very  great  departments  of  truth  may  be  categorized 
and  looked  at  in  parallel  lines,  under  the  respective  titles  of 
laws  of  mathematics,  and  laws  of  beauty.  The  limits  of  these 
departments,  their  points  of  divergence  and  of  coalescence,  are 
not  our  present  concern.  We  have  to  speak  of  the  laws  of 
beauty,  and  introduce  the  laws  of  mathematics  to  aid  our  ex- 
planation. Of  both  of  these  we  have  this  assertion  to  make  ; 
that  they  are  absolute  and  self-dependent.  No  one  with  whom 
men  would  reason  doubts  the  absoluteness  of  mathematical 
truth  :  it  has  been  questioned,  but  we  must  at  present  assume 
it  as  a  fact,  that  the  laws  of  beauty — what  is  often  called 
sesthetic,  and  what  Ruskin  calls  theoretic  truth — are  also  abso- 
lutely true  and  single.  In  other  words,  however  much  they 
may  seem  to  man  to  fluctuate,  these  laws  are  the  writing  of 
the  Eternal  mind,  and  are  more  stable  than  the  created  uni- 
verse. This  is  now,  so  far  as  we  know,  the  belief  of  all  our 
higher  thinkers ;  its  being  questioned  so  largely  during  last 
century  was  merely  the  exhibition,  in  the  region  of  criticism, 
of  that  skepticism  characteristic  of  the  time.  The  natural  and 
usual  connection  between  sensational  theories  of  morals  and 
relative  theories  of  beauty,  has  been  ably  noted  by  Dr. 
M'Vicar.  The  ancient  and  noble  faith  is,  that  the  laws  of 
beauty  are  independent  of  man  and  removed  above  circum- 
stance, precisely  as  the  truths  of  geometry.  The  laws  by 
which  the  colors  of  the  rainbow  are  mingled- — ^by  which  the 
draped  elm-branch  hangs — ^by  which  the  long  sweeps  of 
mountain  curve  are  drawn — by  which  the  waves  bend,  and 
wreath,  and  dance,  with  the  grace  of  new-born  Cytheras — are 
as  firmly  established  in  the  mind  of  God  as  the  laws  by 
which  he  has  hung  the  world  on  nothing.  If  any  man  agrees 
not  with  us  here,  we  can  carry  him  no  further.  But,  suppos- 
ing this  granted,  let  us  next  inquire  how  the  human  mind,  in 


JOHN     FOSTER.  353 

its  present  shattci-3d  and  enfeebled  condition,  looks  at  the  re- 
spective provinces  of  mathematic  and  aesthetic  truth.  The 
process  by  which  man  has  unfolded  the  truths  of  mathematics 
seems  to  us  comparable  to  the  gradual  removal  of  the  clay, 
or  sandstone,  or  chalk,  from  a  fossil.  Line  by  line,  the  encas- 
ing substance  is  removed,  the  plates  of  the  old  scales,  the 
forms  of  the  old  bones,  are  displayed  ;  the  instant  a  new  por- 
tion is  uncovered,  it  is  seen  perfectly,  and  without  mistake ; 
nothing  further  is  to  be  learned  regarding  it.  Exact] y  so  in 
mathematics ;  as  each  new  proposition  is  unfolded,  the  attain- 
ment is  perfect,  removed  from  the  possibility  at  once  of  ques- 
tion and  of  improvement.  The  human  mind  has  retained 
power,  by  however  long  a  process,  to  unvail  mathematical 
truth  perfectly.  It  has  not  been  so  with  the  laws  of  beauty. 
These  may  be  compared  rather  to  immovable  stars,  fixed  in 
the  heavens,  while  far  below  there  is  a  cloudy  atmosphere, 
kept  in  perpetual  turmoil  by  tempests,  through  which  they  can 
but  gleam  at  moments  ;  up  into  the  vault  men  gaze  and  gaze 
with  their  sin-dimmed  eyes ;  so  wildly  do  the  clouds  roll  and 
toss,  fed  so  feeble  is  their  vision,  that  at  times  they  are  apt 
to  turn  away,  and  exclaim  that  those  stars  are  not  fixed  at 
all,  but  are  mere  stray  meteors  wandering  through  the  cloud- 
rack.  As  yet  no  man  has  so  clearly  and  conclusively  fixed 
what  their  position  and  relative  magnitude  are,  as  to  command 
universal  assent ;  but  in  no  age  has  the  eyesight  of  men  been 
so  dim,  that  stray  gleams  from  them  have  not  been  noted,  and 
sure  though  partial  tidings  of  what  they  are  obtained.  But 
the  grand  fact  to  be  remembered  is  this  :  That  every  gleam 
really  discerned  has  been  seen  by  man,  not  created,  has  been  a 
glimpse  of  a  light  of  which  God  is  the  eternal  fountain.  For 
some  reason,  which  we  may  well  leave  to  His  wisdom,  neither 
the  laws  of  mathematics,  nor  the  laws  of  beauty,  are  in  this 


854  JOHN     FOSTER. 

world  revealed  specially  to  those  who  seek  a  re-attainment 
of  son  ship  in  God's  house  through  Jesus  Christ ;  but,  as  the 
Christian  believes  in,  and  derives  intellectual  nourishment  from, 
a  new  truth  in  mathematics,  discovered  by  a  blasphemer,  he 
may  rightf  jUy  and  with  good  conscience  look  upon  every  beam 
of  real  beauty,  though  seen  by  an  infidel,  as  a  revelation  of 
the  thoughts  and  workings  of  his  God.  And  the  truths  of 
beauty  seem  to  be  of  a  higher  sort  than  those  of  mathematics. 
These  la^t  are  the  laws  by  which  God  fixed  the  pillars  of  His 
universe  ;  but  beauty,  we  may  reverently  say,  is  His  very  gar- 
ment ;  and  our  greater  ignorance  of  its  laws  than  of  the  laws 
of  mathematics  is,  perhaps,  because,  as  fallen  children,  we  can 
not  see  our  Father's  face. 

Truly  glorious  is  the  prospect  opened  up  by  the  simple  and 
sublime  truth  we  have  feebly  enunciated.  It  enables  the  Chris- 
tian to  go  round  the  garden  of  poetry,  separating  the  Satanic 
slime  from  paradaisal  flowers,  claiming  all  that  is  beautiful  for 
his  God.  Thus  is  that  teeming  sympathy  with  loveliness,  which 
Foster  thought  it  necessary  to  restrain,  nurtured  to  fall  fruition 
and  perfect  bloom.  Thus  all  that  the  human  imagination  has 
in  every  age  framed  of  true  beauty,  returns  to  the  Christian  in 
a  new  relation,  and  with  new  significance  ;  every  form  of  grace 
that  the  Greek  saw  in  the  dusky  wood,  or  rising  from  the  ocean, 
every  fair  mythic  youth  of  Eastern  song,  every  impersonation 
of  summer  dawn  by  Northern  bard.  The  vessels  of  the  Pagan 
temples,  the  notes  of  Pagan  choirs,  may  be  turned  to  the  serv- 
ice of  the  true  God,  and  even  from  the  sterile  desert  of  atheism 
be  gathered  angels'  food.  We  shall  see  the  stars  though  the 
night  is  around  them  ! 

The  devil  is  darkness  and  defilement,  but  he  never  can  cast 
his  livery  over,  and  compel  into  his  service,  one  ray  of  God's 
light ;   .he  fact  of  a  beautiful  object's  being  beautiful,  is  equiva- 


JOHN     FOSTER.  355 

lent  to  the  fact  that  its  heauUj  is  from  God ;  whatever  opposition 
to  beauty,  whatever  defilement  is  exhibited  by  it,  can  not  extin- 
guish its  vital  element ;  to  say  otherwise  were  Manichean. 
The  flower  that  grows  on  the  battle-field  is  as  truly  the  work 
of  God,  and  as  peifectly  reveals  His  beauty,  as  the  flower  that 
wreaths  the  Christian  cottage ;  the  beauty,  where  it  is  real, 
which  has  been  seen  and  sung  of  by  a  Byron  or  a  Shelley, 
may  be  taken  by  the  Christian,  with  clear  open  mind,  as  a 
plant  of  God's  rearing,  though  on  an  unwilling  human  soil. 

Tlie  evil  one  must  be  beaten  into  his  own  grounds,  and  per- 
mitted to  vindicate  as  his  no  spot  of  the  territory  of  our  Father. 
The  earth  was  cursed  in  its  relation  to  man  ;  it  was  degraded 
from  what  it  was  to  Adam,  a  grand  written  scroll — its  words 
the  cloud,  and  flower,  and  mountain,  the  light  by  which  it  was 
read  that  of  the  sun  and  stars — wherein,  as  his  own  heart 
thrilled  with  the  angelic  joy  that  springs  from  rapt  sym- 
pathy with  loveliness,  he  saw  the  glory  and  the  beauty  of 
God,  into  a  field  and  workshop  of  toil,  where  man  can  not 
rise  on  the  wings  of  pure  emotion,  into  the  heaven  of  love- 
liness, because  of  the  brassy  dome  of  labor.  Yet  the  lilies 
of  the  field  were  not  cursed  in  themselves  or  made  less  beau- 
tiful; their  beauty  was  only  vailed  from  men,  so  that  they 
saw  it  not,  nor  were  moved  by  it  to  a  sacred  joy;  and 
we  may  be  absolutely  certain,  both  that  every  thrill  of 
rapture  awakened  in  us  by  true  beauty  is  a  noble  emotion, 
and  that,  when  our  nature  is  restored  to  what  it  was,  or  raised 
higher  than  before,  a  beauty  will  beam  upon  us  from  every 
part  of  God's  universe,  till  then  scarce  dreamed  of. 

Foster's  conception  of  the  fallen  state  of  human  nature,  sha- 
dowing as  it  did  the  whole  range  of  his  opinions,  led  him  into 
views  respecting  the  means  available  and  hopeful  for  the 
amelioration  of  humanity,  which  seem  to  us  of  so  dangerous 


366  JOHN    FOSTER. 

tendency  as  to  require  a  word  of  comment.  He  looked  for 
light  from  heaven,  in  a  way  in  which  it  is  not  now,  we  think, 
to  be  expected,  and  in  which  it  would  do  little  good  if  it  came. 
Casting  his  eye  upon  man  as  an  agency  for  the  regeneration 
of  the  world,  his  feeling  of  the  depth  of  human  corruption  made 
him  almost  turn  from  the  reforming  teacher  or  preacher  in 
despair.  True,  as  we  have  seen,  he  never  flinched,  but  he  con- 
sidered the  world  so  bad,  that  no  terrestrial  mechanism  hitherto 
known  could  save  ;  he  desired,  therefore,  and  ej:pected,  visible 
supernatural  assistance.  It  is  interesting  to  observe  the  eager- 
ness with  which  he  grasps  at  any  appearance  of  supernatural 
influence,  to  account  for  an  extraordinay  religious  movement ; 
the  look  of  suspicion  with  which  he  regards  any  act  of  general 
heroism  is  by  no  means  so  pleasing.  He  strongly  insinuates 
supernatural  aid  in  the  case  of  Whitefield ;  perhaps  the  coldest 
and  smallest  remark  he  ever  made,  and  that  with  the  spirit  of 
which  we  least  sympathize,  is  that  in  which  he  seems  to  cling 
to  the  idea  that  the  ministers  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  who 
left  their  manses  in  1843  would  flinch  when  it  came  to  the 
point.  Foster  had  by  no  means  an  adequate  idea  of  man,  of 
his  countless  capabilities  and  countless  diversities ;  how,  bor- 
rowing a  hint  from  a  clever  writer,  one  might  say  he  suggested 
the  idea  of  a  cross  between  an  angel  and  a  demon  ;  how  the 
heaven-light  and  the  hell-light  mingle  in  his  eye.  And,  for 
one  thing,  he  had  no  clear  idea  of  the  mighty  influence  of 
man  on  man.  He  looked,  to  use  his  own  words,  for  "  the 
interference  of  angelic,  or  some  other  extraordinary  and  yet 
unknown  agency." 

The  influence,  both  for  good  and  evil,  that  may  be  exerted 
by  man  upon  man,  it  were  extremely  difficult  to  overrate. 
The  light  from  the  human  eye  flashes  along  a  column  in  the 
oattle-day  liV^  a  gleam  of  sunlight  on  the  bayonets  ;   read  the 


JOHN     FOSTER.  357 

history  of  the  "  Little  Corporal,"  and  yon  will  know  that  to  be 
a  fact.  The  light  of  the  human  eye  will  set  continents  ablaze 
for  centuries ;  read  the  history  of  Mohammed  and  Islam  for 
the  proof  of  that.  That  light  will  bring  the  men  of  one  half  of 
the  world  upon  those  of  another,  as  the  moon  leads  the  vast 
tidal  wave  of  ocean  ;  witness  Peter  and  his  Crusades.  Think  of 
the  influence  of  Luther  on  the  world,  and  of  Whitefield  upon 
immense  bodies  of  men  ;  think  of  the  sway  of  Knox  in  Scot- 
land, and  of  his  true  successor,  Chalmers  ;  reflect,  in  a  word, 
upon  human  history  in  its  whole  course  ;  and  own  the  irresis- 
tible force  of  the  conviction  that  the  human  eye  and  voice  are 
the  mightiest  agencies  which  have  acted  there,  whether  directly 
as  instruments  of  the  Highest,  or  indirectly  as  such.  Super- 
natural agency  for  the  regeneration  of  the  world  we  distinctly 
look  for ;  but  we  apprehend  that  such  agency  will  not  neces- 
sarily be  in  any  other  sense  than  it  is  in  the  conversion  of  every 
believer.  Conceive  the  effect  of  a  band  of  men  with  the  ardor, 
the  rapt  earnestness,  the  immovable  valor  of  Paul,  and  the 
sacred  enthusiasm  of  John ;  by  the  laws  of  human  nature,  they 
would  move  the  world  as  it  has  never  yet  been  moved ;  and 
what,  save  such  grace  as  may  be  drawn  down  by  prayer,  do 
Christians  now  require  to  be  such?  Our  Saviour  set  the 
human  forever  on  a  level  with  visible  supernatural  agency,  by 
His  declaration  that,  "  If  men  heard  not  Moses  and  the  Proph- 
ets, neither  would  they  be  persuaded  though  one  rose  from 
the  dead."  This  truth  is  of  very  grave  import ;  for,  if  it  is 
our  first  duty  to  avail  ourselves  of  all  aid  to  be  had,  it  is  our 
second  to  ascertain  in  what  case  to  look  for  aid  is  hopeless. 

We  shall  draw  to  a  close  our  exceptions  to  Foster's  teach- 
ing, by  a  brief  glance  at  the  subject  of  amusements.  These, 
as  is  well  known,  were,  on  the  whole,  an  eyesore  to  him :  even 
the  sports  and  dances  of  children  he  looked  on  with  a  scowl  of 


358  JOHN     FOSTER. 

disapproval  and  discontent.  It  was  not,  indeed,  always  so ;  of 
that  we  have  had  satisfactory  proof:  but  he  did  not  feel  at  rest 
respecting  them  ;  any  appearance  of  lightness,  any  approach  to 
frivolity,  in  such  an  earnest  world  as  ours,  he  could  not  sanc- 
tion with  the  kind  indulgence  of  sympathy.  He  saw  what  was 
bad  in  amusements,  but  not  what  was  good ;  he  perceived  not 
the  end  they  serve  in  the  present  economy,  if  not  perfect  or 
altogether  excellent  themselves,  in  yet  averting  worse  evils, 
and  at  lowest  finding  something  harmless  for  idle  hands  and 
feet  to  do.  He  fixed  his  eye  too  exclusively  on  the  hollowness 
of  worldly  courtesy,  and  while  he  sneered  it  away  he  told  us 
not  what  to  put  in  its  place.  The  present  fabric  of  society  is, 
indeed,  crazy  and  infirm,  rottenness  in  its  rafters,  flaws  in  its 
iron-work,  cracks  in  its  pillars ;  but  all  must  be  better  and 
stronger  ere  these  can  be  dispensed  with  ;  pull  them  out  with 
the  rash  hand  now,  and  all  will  go  into  a  heap  of  rubbish. 

What  is  the  rationale  of  noble  amusement '?  what  its  method 
and  what  its  end  1  In  the  mirthful  meeting,  it  is  intended,  and 
should  be,  so  far  as  is  possible,  attained,  that  the  social  instincts 
come  into  healthful  and  cheering  play,  that  the  latent  fire  of 
affection  for  our  brethren  and  sisters,  simply  as  such,  by,  as  it 
were,  the  pleasing  friction  of  concourse  and  converse,  evolve 
itself  on  all  faces  in  genial  smiling  or  free  laughter ;  that  the 
frame,  physical  and  psychal,  sportively  unbend  itself  without 
sinking  into  torpor,  drawing  refreshment  and  invigoration  from 
a  certain  active  rest,  midway  between  sleep  and  labor.  Such 
is  needful  for  poor  man,  and  nature  has  kindly  given  it. 

Three  radical  errors,  in  three  respective  ways,  may  vitiate 
the  philosophic  perfection  of  amusement.  The  entertainment 
may  be  simply  and  exclusively  animal ;  then  it  is  ignoble  in 
man :  it  may  be  simply  mental ;  then  it  defeats  its  purpose : 
it  may  be  destitute  of  true  kindness,  of  trustful,  friendly  con- 


JOHN     FOSTER.  359 

fidence ;  then  it  is  false.     This  is  self-evident  and  irreversible, 
and  thus  may  all  amusement  be  tried. 

How  do  our  public  ball-rooms  and  large  formal  dancing- 
parties  stand  the  test  ?  Not  remarkably  well.  Genuine  geni- 
ality is  well-nigh  absent.  The  kindness  consists  in  becks,  and 
bows,  and  ceremonies ;  in  lispings,  and  simpers,  and  smiles ; 
all  of  which  were  accurately  put  down  in  the  dancing-master's 
bill.  It  is  a  fiirce,  better  or  worse  played,  in  which  men  and 
women  act  kindness.  It  is  also  highly  distinctive  of  the  place 
that  mind  is  wanting.  Was  it  not  Hook  who  observed  that 
dancing  and  intellect  are  in  our  island  in  an  inverse  ratio  1  It 
was  a  shrewd  remark ;  and  one  thing  upon  which  frequenters 
of  ball-rooms,  of  both  sexes,  seem  unanimous,  is  that  the  par- 
ticular persons  with  whom  they  have  happened  to  dance  were 
remarkably  silly.  In  plain  truth,  the  entertainment  must  be 
put  in  comparison  with  those  of  the  lower  animals.  All  the 
inferior  tribes  have  their  amusements.  Crows  wheel  round  in 
the  sky,  sweeping  in  full  circle,  evidently  in  joyous  sport ;  kit- 
tens and  dogs  are  familiar  examples ;  donkeys,  be  it  known, 
are  remarkable  frisky,  when  it  is  their  own  amusement  they 
have  to  attend  to ;  even  sheep  have  been  observed  clumsily 
gambolling  and  kicking  about  in  their  thick  woolly  vestures, 
and  have  suggested  the  idea  of  a  ball-room  of  ladies  and  gen- 
tlemen threading  the  wreathed  dance  in  flannel-dressing  gowns. 
Now  we  distinctly  allow  that  the  entertainments  of  a  ball-room 
may  produce  that  swiftened  gallop  of  the  blood,  and  consequent 
exhilaration  of  animal  spirits,  which,  we  presume,  attend  the 
sports  of  the  sheep  and  the  donkey  ;  and  the  music  and  Cham- 
pagne may  be  allowed,  in  philosophic  fliirness,  to  set  the  ball- 
room, considered  as  a  place  of  animal  sport,  perceptibly  above 
the  playgrounds  of  the  last-mentioned  creatures :  but,  since  we 
are  thus  liberal,  we  will  be  permitted  to  say  that,  when  you 


360  JOHN     FOSTER. 

have  no  friendliness,  no  all-pervasive  play  of  mirth,  no  unlaced 
ease  and  freedom,  when  you  stand  to  each  other  merely  in  the 
relation  of  necessaries  to  the  dance,  the  pleasure,  however 
heightened,  is  animal  in  essence  and  ignoble. 

Eelaxing  amusement,  however,  is  noble  and  proper,  when- 
ever it  bides  the  test  we  have  proposed.  When  you  can  trust- 
fully grasp  the  hand  extended  to  yours ;  when  you  know  the 
smile  on  the  lip  that  addresses  you  to  be  the  speechless  voice 
of  the  viewless  spirit  of  kindness  ;  when  you  can  be  assured 
that  the  tongue,  now  tuned  to  soft  geniality  and  friendliness, 
will  not  to-morrow  slander  your  name ;  when  mirth  flows  in 
its  natural  channels,  and  trustful  heart  leaps  in  sympathy  with 
trustful  heart ;  then  all  is  right.  And  if,  in  such  an  assem- 
blage, the  joyous  exhilaration  will  be  increased  by  moving  to 
harmonious  sound,  with  gestures  of  beauty  and  vivacious 
grace,  let  no  one  object  to  the  dance ;  the  buoyant  leaping  of  th(? 
blood  is  nature's,  the  laws  of  beauty  in  sound  and  sight  are 
nature's — who  can  say  they  are  wrong  1  The  rain  falls  no 
less  cheeringly  because  the  sunbeams  painted  the  clouds  with 
gold  and  vermilion  ;  industry  and  action  flourish  all  the  better, 
for  this  sporting  in  the  sunlight  of  mirth  and  gladness. 

We  seriously  invite  all  persons  to  consider  the  essential  ac- 
cordance of  this  with  Christianity,  with  the  example  of  our  Master. 
Never  smile  passed  from  human  countenance  as  He  entered  the 
abode,  never  child  ceased  to  frolic  because  He  was  near.  We 
speak  most  seriously,  deliberately,  and  reverently,  when  we  say 
that  if,  in  the  degenerate  state  of  the  Jews  at  the  time,  they  still 
retained  any  noble  melodies  commemorative  of  the  days  and 
deeds  of  the  first  Asmoneans,  He  would  have  listened  while  they 
were  sung  without  commanding  silence,  and  sanctioned  by  His 
sacred  approval  the  flow  of  manly  mirth.  Because  worldly  amuse- 
ment, as  we  in  general  find  it,  is  unworthy  of  men,  let  us  not  for- 


JOHN    FOSTER.  861 

get  that  the  relaxing  and  yet  reinvigorating  enjoyments  of  social 
entertainment  were  never  frowned  upon  by  Him  whose  sympa- 
thy embraced  every  thing  beautiful  and  true  in  this  universe. 

It  will  be  remarked  that  we  have  in  no  way  restricted  true 
lawful  amusement  to  one  form.  Our  tests  exclude  all  that 
ought  to  be  excluded,  but  make  room  for  all  else.  In  the 
freest  and  best  relaxation,  the  heart  will  naturally  turn  to  what 
draws  it  most,  and  the  devout  Christian  may  find  every  essen- 
tial of  recreating  social  enjoyment  in  sharing  with  others  the 
feelings  of  gratitude  or  irrepressible  love  to  his  God  which  fill 
his  bosom.  As  true  recreation,  as  pure  enjoyment,  may  be 
derived  from  the  sharing  of  Christian  feelings,  as  from  any 
other  outgoing  of  the  heart,  or  rather  far  truer  and  purer. 
Were  the  hymns  which,  at  early  morning,  the  primitive  Chris- 
tians sung  to  Jesus  less  joyful  than  the  bacchantic  choruses  that 
had  made  night  hideous  a  few  hours  before  1  Nay,  this  form 
of  enjoyment  will  ultimately  swallow  up  all  others.  Mean- 
while, it  is  bootless  to  scowl  upon  amusements ;  by  no  single 
edict  can  they  be  removed  or  reformed.  Only  let  us  always 
keep  the  end  in  view,  and  strive  to  be  on  the  way  of  improve- 
ment. As  the  human  mind  becomes  gradually  elevated,  and 
the  human  heart  gradually  deepened,  this  and  many  other  re- 
forms will  come  in  their  season. 

We  have  thus  found  not  a  little  to  qualify  and  supplement 
in  the  works  of  Foster.  It  were  quite  an  erroneous  idea,  how- 
ever, if  our  exceptions  were  taken  as  illustrative  of  the  whole 
tenor  of  his  works,  or  as  testing  their  general  value.  We 
mean  rather  to  witness  their  worth,  and  aim  merely  at  freeing 
this  of  excrescence,  and  making  it  more  accessible.  His  books 
are  previous  in  a  high  and  perennial  sense.  You  can  not  read 
any  paragraph  of  them,  without  perceiving  that  an  earnest  and 
lofty  mind  is  at  work.     Earnestness  was  perhaps  his  distin- 

16 


362  JOHN     FOSTER. 

guishing  characteristic ;  over  his  very  page  you  seem  to  see 
bending  the  knit  brow  and  indomitable  eye  of  the  thinker. 
This  man,  you  feel,  is  conscious  that  it  is  a  great  and  awful 
thing  to  be  alive — to  be  born  to  that  dread  inheritance  of  duty 
and  destiny  which  awaits  every  spirit  of  man  that  arrives  on 
earth.  He  shakes  from  him  the  dust  of  custom ;  he  little 
heeds  the  sanctions  of  reputation  ;  afar  off  and  very  still,  com- 
pared with  a  voice  coming  from  above,  he  hears  the  trumpet- 
ings  of  fame :  calm,  determined,  irresistible,  his  foot  ever 
seems  to  press  down  till  it  reaches  the  basal  adamant.  This 
earnestness  is  made  the  more  impressive  from  the  manifest 
leaning  of  his  mind  toward  the  gloomy  and  mysterious.  Of 
habits  of  thought  deeply  reflective,  he  retired  as  it  were  into 
the  inner  dwelling  of  his  mind,  there  to  ponder  the  insoluble 
questions  of  destiny ;  like  dim  curtains,  painted  with  shapes 
of  terror,  of  gloom,  and  of  wierd  grandeur,  that  hang  round 
a  dusky  hall,  waving  fitfully  in  the  faint  light,  these  questions 
seem  to  us  to  have  hung  round  his  mind,  filling  it  all  with 
solemn  shadow  :  he  looked  on  them  as  on  mystic  hieroglyphs, 
but  when  he  asked  their  secret,  they  remained  silent  as  Isis  ; 
he  ever  turned  away,  saying,  in  baffled  pride,  I  will  compel 
your  answer  in  eternity,  yet  always  turned  again,  fascinated 
by  their  sublime  mystery,  and  stung  by  their  calm  defiance. 
No  word  of  frivolity  escapes  him  ;  he  tells  men  sternly  what 
they  have  to  dare,  and  do,  and  suffer  ;  he  never  says  the  bur- 
den is  light  or  the  foe  weak,  but  the  one  must  be  borne  and 
the  other  must  be  met.  You  feel  in  perusing  his  works  as  in 
going  through  a  rugged  region,  where  nature,  forgetting  her 
gentler  moods,  desires  to  write  upon  the  tablet  of  the  world 
her  lessons  of  solemnity  and  of  power  ;  you  perceive  that  only 
hardy  plants  can  breathe  this  atmosphere,  that  here  no  Arca- 
dian lawns  can  smile,  no  Utopian  palaces  arise ;  there  awakens 


JOHN     FOSTER.  868 

in  you  that  courage,  you  seem  to  be  conscious  of  that  sense  of 
greatness,  which  the  strong  soul  knows  in  the  neighborhood  of 
crags  and  forests,  where  the  torrent  blends  its  stern  murmur 
with  the  music  of  the  mountain  blast. 

Foster  is  to  us  one  of  the  best  representatives  of  the  literary 
Christian  priesthood  which  is  arising  in  these  days.  He  did 
not  leave  his  Christianity  in  the  pulpit ;  in  his  every  book, 
and  his  every  article,  he  speaks  as  one  fully  conscious  that,  by 
ceasing  to  preach  his  religion,  he  has  not  obtained  any  dispen- 
sation from  the  duty  of  proclaiming  it.  If  asked  to  indicate 
what  we  would  deem  a  fair  specimen  of  that  Christianized  lite- 
rature, to  which  we  earnestly  look  as  to  a  fountain  of  blessed- 
ness for  these  latter  times,  we  know  not  whither  we  could 
point  with  more  decision  than  to  John  Foster's  contributions 
to  the  Eclectic  Review. 

It  can  not,  perhaps,  be  alleged  that  there  is  any  positively 
new  revelations  of  truth  to  be  exhibited  from  the  writings  of 
Foster.  But  they  have  the  originality  of  spirit  and  the  origin- 
ality of  application :  the  grain  is  the  ancient  grain  of  Christian 
truth,  of  manly  sentiment,  and  of  free  loyalty ;  but  it  has 
grown  green  in  the  showers  of  a  new  spring,  and  yellow  un- 
der the  suns  of  a  new  summer,  and  it  yields  a  rich  harvest, 
wholesome  and  pleasant  as  before,  for  the  food  of  man.  In  an 
age  when  severe  teaching  was  perhaps  more  than  usually  re- 
quired, he  recalled  the  public  mind  to  those  stern  aspects  and 
realities  of  our  lot  which  it  is  never  well  to  forget.  His  en- 
forcement of  the  great  doctrine  of  human  depravity  is  in  itself 
sufficient  to  render  his  works  permanently  valuable.  And  he 
was  perhaps  the  first  distinctly  to  apprehend  and  point  out 
how  certain  of  the  great  influences  of  the  age  are  to  be  dealt 
with :  he  fairly  understood  the  French  Revolution,  and  pro- 
claimed the  necessity  of  universal  education. 


364  JOHN     FOSTER. 

To  criticise  his  separate  works  is  beyond  our  scope,  and 
were  quite  superfluous.  His  style,  even  in  its  ultimate  form, 
was  unquestionably  and  definably  defective.  It  never  became 
capable  of  expressing  delicate,  sprightly,  or  buoyant  emotion ; 
it  wants  variety,  light  graceful  force,  easy-stepping  familiar 
elegance ;  it  has  always  something  of  an  elephantine  tread,  and 
its  gayety  is  apt  to  remind  one  rather  of  the  jingling  of  an  ele- 
phant's trappings,  than  of  the  laughter  of  children  :  or,  to 
change  the  figure,  it  never  spreads  out  into  wide  islanded  shal- 
lows, rippling  to  the  breeze  and  sparkling  in  the  sunbeams, 
but  is  always  a  massive,  stately,  slow-rolling  river.  Yet  it 
possesses  very  rare  and  excellent  qualities.  It  is  remarkably 
rich  and  expressive ;  you  can  not  skim  along  it.  Almost 
strangely,  too,  considering  its  mass,  it  is  by  no  means  fatigu- 
ing. Continually  and  unexpectedly,  as  if  nourished  by  hidden 
fountains,  the  flowers  of  a  deeply  poetic  nature  bloom  forth  on 
the  page.  And  though  it  can  not  be  said  to  possess  sprightli- 
ness,  yet  there  is  not  wanting  a  pleasant  caustic  wit,  a  quiet, 
earnest  humor.  Foster  possessed  a  true  vein  of  humor. 
Perhaps  no  style  so  deeply  serious  was  ever  so  widely 
popular. 

We  have  entirely  abstained  from  speaking  of  Foster's  pri- 
vate life.  His  biography,  however  partial,  must  be  that  of  a 
thinker  ;  his  external  life  was  that  of  a  thousand  Englishmen. 
He  was  a  shrewd,  somewhat  sarcastic,  but  friendly  man,  lov- 
ing his  friends  and  social  converse,  and  deeply  happy  in  his 
family.  He  excelled  in  conversation  when  in  a  genial  atmos- 
phere, and  specially  when  any  friend  whom  he  loved  and 
honored — Hall,  Fawcett,  Hughes,  or  such  other — was  present. 
He  took  a  deep  interest  in  politics,  lending  all  his  influence  to 
the  side  of  freedom. 

We  noticed  Foster's  marriage ;  we  may  venture  to  cast  one 


JOHN     FOSTER.  365 

look  upon  him  as  he  lays  his  Maria,  mourning,  in  the  grave. 
It  wa?  in  1832,  and  he  was  now  sinking  into  the  vale  of  years : 
we  think  no  description  of  the  joy  of  a  long  married  life,  where 
perfect  love  and  perfect  friendship  have  blended  mortal  and 
immortal  joys  in  one  pure  harmony,  could  so  pathetically  body 
forth  its  felicity  as  the  following  words,  written  by  him  when 
first  the  light  of  the  present  drew  away,  to  rest,  like  a  sunset, 
on  the  past : — "  I  have  returned  hither,  but  have  an  utter  re- 
pugnance to  say — returned /iow?e;  that  name  is  applicable  no 
longer.  .  .  .  There  is  a  weight  on  the  heart  which  the 
most  friendly  human  hand  can  not  remove.  The  melancholy 
fact  is,  that  my  beloved,  inestimable  companion  has  left  me. 
It  comes  upon  me — in  evidence  how  various  and  sad  !  And 
yet,  for  a  moment,  sometimes  I  feel  as  if  I  could  not  realize  it 
as  true.  There  is  something  that  seems  to  say,  can  it  be  that 
I  shall  see  her  no  more;  that  I  shall  still,  one  day  after 
another,  find  she  is  not  here,  that  her  affectionate  voice  and  look 
will  never  accost  me  ;  the  kind  grasp  of  her  hand  never  more 
be  felt ;  that  when  I  would  be  glad  to  consult  her,  make  an 
observation  to  her,  address  to  her  some  expression  of  love,  call 
her  '  my  dear  wife,'  as  I  have  done  so  many  thousand  times, 
it  will  be  in  vain — she  is  not  here  ?  Several  times,  a  con- 
siderable number,  even  since  I  followed  her  to  the  tomb,  a 
momentary  suggestion  of  thought  has  been,  as  one  and  another 
circumstance  has  occurred,  '  I  will  tell  Maria  of  this.'  "  One 
treads  with  silence  and  tears  in  the  sacred  neighborhood  of 
such  a  sorrow. 

As  Foster's  life  drew  near  its  end,  the  sadness  which  had 
ever  characterized  him  became  more  deep.  He  never  wavered 
in  his  trust  in  God,  but  he  felt  ever  the  more  profoundly  that 
this  world  was  one  of  sorrow  and  darkness ;  he  looked  wist- 
fully into  the  fut)ire,  pondering  upon  the  intermediate  state 


366  JOHN     FOSTER. 

and  such  subjects ;  he  walked  sadly  and  solemnly  gathering  up 
questions  for  eternity. 

At  last  he  came  to  die:  it  was  October,  1844.  On  his 
death-bed  he  showed  the  same  tremulous  sensibility  to  the 
distress  or  annoyance  of  others  as  had  always  characterized 
him.  He  would  permit  no  servant  to  sit  up  with  him  during 
the  night,  and  if  it  was  insisted  uj^on,  he  could  not  sleep  ;  the 
fact  is  little  in  itself,  but  of  singular  interest  in  the  case  of 
Foster. 

The  substantial  peace  which  he  had  attained  did  not  desert 
him  in  his  dying  hours.  He  died  as  one  can  die  who  has  well 
acquitted  him  in  the  far  sterner  duty  of  living  a  true  and  godly 
life.  As  he  felt  his  strength  gradually  stealing  away,  he  re- 
marked on  his  increasing  weakness,  and  added,  "  But  I  can 
pray,  and  that  is  a  glorious  thing."  Truly  a  glorious  thing ; 
more  glorious  than  atheist  or  pantheist  can  even  pretend  to. 
To  look  up  to  an  Omnipotent  Father,  to  sj^eak  to  Him,  to 
love  Him ;  to  stretch  upward  as  a  babe  from  the  cradle,  that 
He  may  lift  His  child  in  his  everlasting  arms  to  the  resting- 
place  of  His  own  bosom ;  this  is  the  portion  of  the  dying 
Christian.  He  was  overheard  thus  speaking  with  himself: 
"  O  death,  where  is  thy  sting  1  O  grave,  where  is  thy  victory  ? 
Thanks  be  to  God,  who  giveth  us .  the  victory,  through  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ !"  The  eye  of  the  terror-crowned  was  upon 
him.  and  thus  he  defied  him. 


CHAPTER  III 


THOMAS     ARNOLD. 


About  the  beginning  of  this  century,  a  little  boy  might  have 
been  seen  playing  in  a  garden  at  West  Cowes,  Isle  of  Wight. 
The  name  of  Napoleon  and  the  din  and  rumor  of  war  filled 
the  air  around  him :  his  keen  eyes  brightened  and  sparkled 
continually,  as  they  looked  out  upon  martial  pomp  and  prepar- 
ation. The  sight  of  the  great  war-ship  entering  the  harbor,  or 
bearing  away  to  meet  the  foe  ;  the  news  of  battle  and  victory ; 
the  loud,  loyal  choruses  of  mariners,  who  stepped  and  looked 
with  the  consciousness  of  ruling  the  waves :  these,  mingling 
with  the  kindly  tones  and  melodies  of  a  Christian  home,  which 
softened  every  harshness  and  discord  into  a  musical  harmony, 
were  the  earliest  influences  to  mold  the  young  mind  of 
Thomas  Arnold.  Though  naturally  bashful,  the  child  was  yet, 
so  to  speak,  intensely  alive,  in  body  and  mind.  He  got  hold 
of  Pope's  Homer,  and  the  many  voices  of  war  around  him 
strengthened  its  influence ;  it  was  one  of  his  favorite  amuse- 
ments, to  enact  the  Homeric  battles,  with  staves  and  garden 
implements  for  swords  and  spears,  reciting,  with  a  great  sense 
of  the  valor  and  grandeur  of  the  proceeding,  the  speeches  of 
the  heroes  of  Homer,  that  is,  of  Pope.  At  eight,  he  went  to 
Warminster  School,  at  twelve,  to  Winchester ;  in  each  he 
showed  sympathetic  intensity  of  intellect,  heart  and  head  act- 
ing strongly  and  ii:  unison.     He  displayed  great  warmth  in 


368  THOMAS     ARN(FLD. 

his  bojisli  friendships.  Ere  proceeding  to  Oxford,  which  he 
did  at  sixteen,  his  information  had  extended  widely.  He  had 
read  Gibbon  and  Mitford  twice,  and  was  well  acquainted  with 
Russel's  Modern  Europe ;  he  knew  also,  to  a  considerable  ex- 
tent, the  historians  of  Greece  and  Rome ;  his  bent,  it  was 
already  manifest,  was  toward  geography  and  history. 

Arnold  entered  at  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  in  1811 ; 
it  was  an  important  epoch  in  his  life,  and  his  whole  sojourn  at 
the  university  is  full  of  interest.  The  society  in  Corpus  was 
select ;  and  during  Arnold's  career  it  embraced  young  men  of 
an  extremely  high  and  rare  order ;  such,  for  instance,  as 
Whateley,  Heber,  and  Keble.  He  was  an  important  member 
of  the  fraternity.  He  represented  the  healthful,  well-balanced, 
daringly  active  English  mind ;  instinct  with  sympathies  that 
swept  beyond  academic  walls  to  expatiate  in  the  wide  world ; 
fond  of  poetry,  and  ardently  affectionate,  yet  shrewd,  discrim- 
inating, and  burning  his  way  through  words  to  things.  The 
air  a-t  Oxford  was  such  as  breathes  through  the  Hall  of  the 
Past,  and  the  great  body  of  the  students  of  Corpus,  each  in  his 
several  manner,  loved  and  reverenced  what  was  old  ;  but  Ar- 
nold was  for  freedom  and  advancement,  and  rebelled  against 
the  genius  of  the  place.  Yet,  one  by  one,  the  nobler  of  his 
fellow-students  came  to  know  him  and  to  love  him ;  into  one 
true  heart  after  another  he  threw  his  invisible  grappling-iron, 
and  linked  it  to  his  for  life.  Corpus  was  a  little  senate  in 
itself,  where  all  the  big  questions  of  the  day  w^ere  discussed ; 
and  he  was  an  active  and  vehement  disputant.  We  can  im- 
agine him  appearing  at  times  even  overbearing,  but  it  was 
only  when  he  was  himself  overborne  by  his  subject.  He  could 
not  hold  an  opinion  by  halves ;  if  it  entered  his  heart  at  all,  it 
was  received  with  the  warm  welcome  of  hospitality,  and 
served  and  defended  at  all  risks.     He  was  to  be  seen  in  the 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  3G9 

midst  of  a  circle  of  the  best  men  of  Corpus,  combating  valiant-' 
ly  and  cheerily  for  his  own  views  against  them  all.  The  logi- 
cal argucr  would  urge  the  danger  of  cutting  the  moorings  of 
society,  and  drifting  off  on  the  revolutionary  sea;  but  he 
would  answer  that  it  was  only  conservatism  which  transmuted 
harmonious  change  into  colliding  revolution :  the  Tory  loyalist, 
whose  father  was  in  Parliament,  might  expatiate  on  the  glories 
of  the  throne  and  the  nobility,  as  the  ramparts  of  a  nation ; 
out  he  would  briefly  answer,  I  love  the  people,  and  feudalism 
was  wrong  in  its  very  idea :  and  then,  in  mild  accents,  might 
Keble  evoke  a  faint  cloud  of  golden  dust  from  the  treasuries 
of  the  past ;  and  this  he  would  summarily  lay  -with  some  cold 
water  from  the  wells  of  his  favorite  Aristotle.  Yet  his  warm 
sympathies  could  not  resist  the  strong  and  kindly  influence  of 
the  place,  and  he  became  somewhat  more  conservative. 

Of  his  religious  feelings  during  his  abode  at  Corpus,  we  have 
slight  information.  His  reading  led  him  to  Barrow,  Hooker, 
and  Taylor,  and  his  heart  was  opened  by  natural  nobleness  to 
the  more  profound  and  enduring  influence  of  Christian  truth. 
His  disposition  was  devout,  his  morals  pure ;  further  we  can 
not  declare. 

Altogether,  the  university  career  of  Arnold  is  to  be  pro- 
nounced auspicious.  If  his  scholarship  was  not  what  is  tech- 
nically called  profound,  it  was  yet  thorough  and  comprehen- 
sive :  he  was  not  ignorant  of  words ;  but  that  hungry  instinct 
of  reality  within  him,  with  which  it  was  vain  to  contend,  called 
resistlessly  for  things.  He  won  the  prize  for  two  essays,  Latin 
and  English;  he  became  intimately  and  sympathizingly  ac- 
quainted with  ancient  history ;  and  he  drank  in  the  wisdom  of 
Aristotle  with  almost  passionate  enthusiasm.  But  the  most 
benignant  of  all  the  influences  which  encircled  him  at  the  uni- 
versity, was  assuredly  the  friendship  of  such  as  Keble,  Whate- 
16* 


STO  THOMAS    ARNOLD. 

ley,  and  Justice  Coleridge.  These  friendships  were  cherished 
by  him  during  life,  with  the  earnestness  of  duty  and  the  en- 
thusiasm of  love.  It  is  a  beautiful  and  inspiring  spectacle  to 
behold  the  several  friends,  as  from  their  respective  stations 
they  send  kindly  and  life-long  greetings  to  each  other ;  like 
vessels  in  one  fleet  sailing  toward  the  dawn,  that  hang  out 
lamps  of  signal  and  comfort,  to  point  the  way  and  break  the 
darkness. 

Just  as  he  was  about  to  emerge  from  the  years  of  youth 
and  education  to  those  of  manhood  and  performance,  Arnold's 
mind  became  more  deeply  moved  than  it  had  hitherto  been  on 
the  subject  of  religion.  He  remained  at  the  university  for  four 
years  after  ceasing  to  be  a  gownsman.  During  these  it  was 
that  his  mind  passed  through  a  discipline  of  doubt,  which 
finally  resulted  in  the  establishment  of  his  character  on  a  Chris- 
tian basis,  in  what  he  would  have  defined  as  his  conversion. 
The  precise  stages  of  this  all-important  occurrence  we  are  un- 
able in  his  case  to  trace;  but  his  ultimate  attainment  was 
clear  and  decisive,  the  general  method  of  his  reaching  it  is  per- 
fectly ascertainable,  and  the  lessons  conveyed  in  it  to  similar 
inquirers,  together  with  its  testimony  to  the  truth  of  Chris- 
tianity, invaluable. 

The  special  subject  of  his  questioning  was,  as  in  the  case  of 
Foster,  the  divinity  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  His  belief  on 
the  point  appears  to  have  been  confirmed  by  two  great  argu- 
ments :  first,  that  the  attempts  made  by  those  who  rejected  the 
doctrine  to  find  for  their  views  a  warrant  in  Scripture,  were  the 
mere  mockery  of  criticism ;  and,  second,  that  the  abstraction 
to  which  deism  gives  the  name  of  God,  leaves  all-unsatisfied  in 
the  human  soul  that  sublime  craving  which  is  its  distinguishing 
glory,  that  yearning  pain  which  finds  solace  only  in  communion 
with  the  Divine.     In  order  to  his  finding  the  former  of  these 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  3*71 

arguments  coi'-clusive,  it  was  necessary  that  he  should  consider 
the  testimony  of  Scripture  final  in  the  matter ;  and  the  ques- 
tion arises,  What  were  the  grounds  on  which  he  received  the 
Bible  as  the  word  of  the  living  God  1  The  answer  we  are  en- 
abled to  render,  not  perhaps  precisely  given  at  this  period,  and 
gathered  by  us  not  from  any  single  declaration  uttered  at  any 
one  time,  but  from  the  tenor  of  his  whole  writings,  is  singularly 
satisfactory.  It  is  on  all  hands  conceded  that  his  historical 
acumen  was  piercing :  his  most  obvious  characteristics  were 
clear  shrewdness,  and  sharp-cutting  English  sense;  he  had 
trained  himself  to  investigate  ancient  writings  by  constant 
study  from  his  boyish  days  of  Greek  and  Roman  authors ; 
and,  in  the  early  vigor  of  his  powers,  he  sat  down  at  the  feet 
of  Niebuhr,  to  listen  to  his  teaching  with  intense  and  increas- 
ing appreciation,  and  to  learn  to  infuse  into  English  historical 
thinking  the  irresistible  penetration  and  clearness  of  that  great 
critic.  He  approached  the  Scriptures  precisely  as  he  did  any 
other  composition  handed  down  from  ancient  times ;  he  applied 
to  them  that  searching  criticism  which  separated  the  chaff  from 
the  wheat  in  Livy,  and  unraveled  the  intricacies  of  Thucydides ; 
and  he  found  conclusive  evidence  that  they  were  the  word  of 
God. 

The  reader  may,  perhaps,  in  reading  the  Biography  of  John 
Sterling  by  Mr.  Carlyle,  have  been  struck  with  the  effect  pro- 
duced upon  the  mind  of  the  former  by  the  perusal  of  Strauss's 
Life  of  Jesus.  Sterling  remarked,  that,  whatsoever  men  were 
going  to,  it  was  plain  enough  what  they  were  going  from ;  this 
German  book,  one  is  apt  to  conclude  from  his  words,  was  to 
deal  the  finally  shattering  blow  to  all  Christian  institutions ; 
the  ears  of  the  world,  you  suppose,  are  deafened  ^vith  the 
runior  of  it,  the  sky  darkened  by  its  mighty  shade.  Of  the 
same  book,  Arnold  wrote  as  follows : — 


8T2  THCMAS     ARNOLD. 

"  What  a  strange  work  Strauss's  Leben  Jesus  appears  to  me, 
judging  of  it  from  the  notices  in  the  '  Studien  unci  Kritiken.' 
It  seems  to  me  to  show  the  ill  effects  of  that  division  of  labor 
which  prevails  so  much  among  the  learned  men  of  Germany. 
Strauss  writes  about  history  and  myths,  without  appearing  to 
have  studied  the  question,  but  having  heard  that  some  pre- 
tended histories  are  mythical,  he  borrows  this  notion  as  an  en 
gine  to  help  him  out  of  Christianity.  But  the  idea  of  men 
writing  mythic  histories  between  the  time  of  Livy  and  Tacitus, 
and  of  St.  Paul  mistaking  such  for  realities !" 

Thus  it  is  that  the  matter  appears  to  one  really  trained  in 
historical  induction.  There  is  no  "  Coleridgean  moonshine"  in 
that  eye !  He  sweeps  through  painted  mist  and  carefully- 
woven  cobweb,  right  to  the  heart  of  the  question.  It  is  to  no 
fond  dreaming  enthusiasm,  very  beautiful,  it  may  be,  but  very 
weak,  that  he  commits  himself;  he  asks  no  aid  from  imagina- 
tion, and  he  does  not  stop  to  inquire  whether  the  plain  fact, 
which  his  Saxon  intellect  demands,  is  given  him  by  logic  or  by 
reason  ;  he  wants  the  fact  itself:  grasping  firmly,  therefore,  the 
hand  of  history,  he  finds  his  step  at  once  on  Judean  hills,  and 
he  is  surrounded  by  men  who  have  the  same  hearts  in  their 
breasts,  the  same  earth  under  their  feet,  as  men  in  the  nine- 
teenth century.  He  fixes  specially  his  regards  upon  Paul. 
He  sees  him  trained  in  the  school  of  Tarsus ;  he  hears  him,  in 
calm,  earnest,  clear,  persuasive  words,  disputing  with  Grecian 
sages ;  he  notes  that  his  opinions  are  so  temperate  that  he  be- 
comes all  things  to  all  men,  that  his  moral  preaching  is  pure, 
mild,  and  thorough,  that  his  zeal  is  stronger  than  death ;  he 
perceives  that  his  every  earthly  prospect  is  blasted,  his  good 
hopes  of  advancement,  under  the  smile  of  high  priest  and 
Pharisee,  turned  into  certainty  of  bitter  hatred,  his  life  rendered 
one  scene  of  hardship,  danger,  and  poverty,  by  his  belief  in  the 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  373 

divine  mission  of  a  certain  Teacher ;  he  observes  that  he  com- 
panies with  men  who  declare  that,  a  few  years  before,  they 
saw  this  Teacner  pass  upward  into  heaven,  and  had  witnessed 
his  raising  of  the  dead  while  He  went  in  and  out  among  them. 
All  is  real,  present,  visible ;  there  is  none  of  the  dimness  of 
antiquity,  the  seclusion  of  mystery;  these  men  sit  there  in 
Judea,  unimpassioned,  earnest,  unanimous ;  there  is  in  the 
whole  scene  no  analogy  the  most  distant  to  aught  resembling 
a  myth  ;  the  gospel  they  proclaim  is  love  and  truth,  the  dan- 
ger they  face  is  death,  the  motive  they  can  have,  on  the  hy- 
pothesis that  they  are  liars,  inconceivable,  the  life  they  lead, 
the  unanimity  of  their  testimony,  on  the  hypothesis  they  are 
enthusiasts,  positive  contradictions:  as  with  a  stamp  of  his 
foot,  he  shakes  the  whole  mythic  theory  to  atoms,  as  an  ab- 
surdity, to  accept  which  were  a  feat  of  credulity  within  the 
powers  of  no  faith  save  that  of  infidelity.  There  is,  we  think, 
a  fine  precision  in  his  instant  selection  of  Paul,  as  afibrding 
absolutely  conclusive  means  of  vindicating  the  strict  historic 
verity  of  Christianity :  the  leading  facts  of  Paul's  life,  as 
eliminated  in  the  Horse  Paulinse,  are  as  well  established,  on 
their  own  evidence,  as  those  of  the  life  of  Calvin  ;  and  if  they 
are  granted,  not  only  does  every  mythic  theory  dissolve  like  a 
film  of  vapor,  but  the  first  links  of  a  chain  are  taken  into  the 
hand,  by  which  it  seems  to  us  scarce  possible  to  avoid  being 
led  believingly  to  the  feet  of  Jesus.  Finding  the  historical 
evidence  of  the  divine  truth  of  Christianity  satisfactory,  he 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  able  to  doubt  that  Paul,  John,  and 
the  other  evangelists,  do,  with  more  or  less  explicitness,  avow 
their  belief  in  the  divinity  of  Jesus.  To  this  belief  he  was 
perhaps  partially  led,  and  in  it  he  was  certainly  confirmed,  by 
the  second  consideration  we  have  mentioned.  We  deem  the 
following  an  important  passage : — 


374  THOMAS    ARNOLD. 

"For  my  own  part,  considering  one  great  object  of  God's 
revealing  Himself  in  the  Person  of  Christ  to  be  the  fm-nishing 
us  with  an  object  of  worship  which  we  could  at  once  love  and 
understand ;  or,  in  other  words,  the  supplying  safely  and 
wholesomely  that  want  in  human  nature,  which  has  shown 
itself  in  false  religions,  in  '  making  gods  after  our  own  devices,' 
it  does  seem  to  me  to  be  forfeiting  the  peculiar  benefits  thus 
offered,  if  we  persist  in  attempting  to  approach  to  God  in  his 
own  incomprehensible  essence,  which,  as  no  man  hath  seen  or 
can  see,  so  no  man  can  conceive  it.  And,  while  I  am  most 
ready  to  allow  the  provoking  and  most  ill-judged  language  in 
which  the  truth,  as  I  hold  it  to  be,  respecting  God,  has  been 
expressed  by  Trinitarians,  so,  on  the  other  hand,  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  Unitarians  have  deceived  themselves,  by  fancying 
that  they  could  understand  the  notion  of  one  God  any  better 
than  that  of  God  in  Christ ;  whereas,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is 
only  of  God  in  Christ  that  I  can  in  my  present  state  of  being 
conceive  any  thing  at  all. "  Strangely  enough,  a  Unitarian  writer 
of  the  day  has  quoted  from  this  passage  against  the  doctrine 
of  the  divinity  of  our  Lord.  To  us  it  appears  simply  the  sub- 
scription of  a  singularly  clear,  and  healthful,  and  honest  mind, 
to  that  great  fact  of  the  human  consciousness,  which  is  the 
chief  argument  deducible  from  nature  in  support  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Trinity.  It  is  a  virtual  appeal  to  the  testimony 
of  history,  that  deism  has  ever  failed  to  take  a  real  hold  of  the 
mass  of  mankind  ;  that,  when  strenuously  pressed  by  dialectic, 
its  deity  has  become  a  confessed  inconceivability,  the  absolute 
nothing  of  Oken,  and  that,  when  left  to  gain  a  footing  among 
the  body  of  a  people,  it  has  taken  the  thousand  forms  of  poly- 
theism. We  will  not  say  that  the  noblest  of  the  Grecian  sages 
pointed  at  nothing,  when  he  longed  for  more  light,  and  dimly 
shadowed  the  Christian  Trinity  ;  even  the  brow  of  Plato  grew 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  375 

sad  imdcr  the  infinite  vault,  filled,  indeed,  with  a  certain  palo 
icy  radiance,  but  having  no  Sun.  Christ  came  to  lift  the  vail 
of  Isis ;  to  fix  the  lorn  eye  of  humanity  on  a  knov;n  God. 
Arnold,  by  his  revering  love  of  the  Saviour,  and  the  satisfaction 
which  he  declared  he  experienced  for  the  higliest  and  most  pro- 
found longings  of  his  soul  in  the  worship  of  Ilim,  testified  that 
jhe  Desired  of  the  nations  had  come  ;  through  Jesus  he  could 
commune  with  God  ;  holding  by  the  hand  of  Jesus,  he  could 
stand  unconsumed,  as  it  were,  in  the  very  blaze  of  the  throne ; 
instead  of  seeking  in  his  words  an  argument  in  support  of  Uni- 
tarian views,  we  find  in  them  one  more  proof  that  tliere  is 
between  poor  man,  lying  in  troubled  slumber  on  the  world- 
desert,  and  his  God,  the  precipice  of  an  unsealed  infinitude,  if 
no  ladder  is  let  down,  if  no  divine  Saviour  has  come.  The 
end  of  all  his  doubt  was,  to  use  his  own  form  of  expression, 
his  placing  himself  consciously  under  the  banner  of  the  Lord 
Jesus,  his  cleaving  to  Him,  his  reposing  absolute  trust  in  Him, 
his  resolving  to  become  His  fl\ithful  soldier  and  servant  to 
life's  end.  Then  his  mind  became  calm  and  strong ;  he  had, 
as  he  again  says,  "  a  security  within,  a  security  not  of  man, 
but  of  God." 

Arnold  now  took  orders  in  the  Church  of  England,  subscrib- 
ing to  her  formularies.  He  professed  not  to  agree  with  these 
in  all  things  ;  he  specially  dissented  from  the  Athanasian  Creed. 
Of  his  views  on  these  points  he  never  made  a  secret,  openly 
declaring  that  no  interpretation  of  the  clauses  to  which  he 
objected  in  the  creed  just  mentioned  could  bring  them  into 
accordance  with  his  opinions,  and  defining  his  act  of  subscrip- 
tion to  indicate  merely  a  general  sympathy  with,  and  willing- 
ness to  adhere  to  the  Church  of  England.  We  have  no  hesitation 
whatever  in  thinking  that  in  this  he  erred.  We  agree  with 
Mr.  Greg  in  believing  him  to  have  acted  with  perfect  honesty ; 


376  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

yet  we  deem  his  mistake  serious.  We  can  not  discuss  the 
matter  here,  but  we  refer  the  reader,  both  for  its  masterly 
treatment,  and  for  what  is  essentially  our  view  of  the  subject, 
to  Foster's  article  on  the  life  of  Paley. 

Arnold  settled  first  at  Laleham,  near  Staines,  with  his  mother, 
aunt,  and  sister,  proposing  to  take  pupils.  Here  he  remained 
for  nine  years,  his  character  gradually  unfolding,  and  his  views 
becoming  matured.  He  disciplined  himself  to  thorough  work, 
and  thought  much.  His  eye,  during  the  period,  turned  with 
ever-increasing  earnestness  upon  the  great  interests  and  ques- 
tions of  his  age  and  country,  and  gradually  every  conservative 
tendency  which  had  attached  to  him  at  Oxford  was  cast  off; 
he  became  the  determined,  uncompromising  foe  of  every  form 
of  worship  of  the  past,  or  attempt  to  clog  the  progress  of  the 
present.  His  religion,  too,  went  on  deepening  from  year  to 
year,  he  drew  closer  and  closer  to  God,  and  to  his  Friend  and 
Saviour  Jesus  ;  and,  more  and  more,  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit 
beamed  forth  in  thought,  feeling,  and  action.  At  Laleham  he 
married,  and  here  six  of  his  nine  children  were  born. 

At  length  Arnold  was  elected,  in  a  marked  and  flattering 
manner,  to  the  head  mastership  of  Rugby.  He  was  then 
thirty -three  years  of  age ;  in  the  very  prime  of  life.  He  con- 
tinued to  occupy  this  post  until  his  death,  and  here  it  was  that 
he  became  so  widely  known  and  valued  as  a  practical  thinker 
and  reformer.  We  desire  to  throw  out  before  the  eye  of  the 
reader  a  whole  general  picture  of  his  life,  for  it  is  so  alone  that 
an  adequate  idea  can  be  formed  regarding  it ;  one  or  two  of 
his  more  remarkable  opinions  we  will  hereafter  briefly  glance 
at. 

The  first  look  at  Arnold's  career  reveals  a  very  important 
circumstance ;  one  which  constituted  a  main  element  in  his 
character,  and  exerted  a  great  influence  in  molding  his  career. 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  3l1 

It  is  impossible  to  regard  him  for  a  moment,  without  perceiv- 
ing the  intensity  of  his  physical  life.     We  have  seen  this  in 
his  early  days ;  it  continued  to  characterize  him  to  the  last. 
It  made  labor  a  positive  pleasure ;  it  sent  him  to  the  mountain 
side  with  ever  fresh  delight ;  it  impelled  him  resistlessly  to 
the  work  before  and  around  him.     Acting  the  Homeric  battles 
in  his  father's  garden,  scampering  over  the  fields  at  Oxford, 
bathing  and  boating  with  his  pupils,  he  is  ever  the  same 
intensely  alive,  joyous  being.     It  is  seen  in  his  flice  ;  he  looks 
as  if  he  were  watching  the  moments  in  their  flight,  eager  to 
grasp  them  ;  his  eye  reminds  us  of  the  good  Ritter  Hagen's  of 
"  the  rapid  glances ;"  his  lips  are  compressed  and  firm,  as  if 
closed  after  the  utterance  of  one  clear  unalterable  No,  which 
Coleridge  could  not  say ;  there  is  strength  in  his  firm  unquiv- 
ering  cheek,  in  his  iron  brows,  in  his  unwrinkled  forehead. 
His  intensity  overthrows  every  thing,  even  literary  delicacy  ; 
'•  I  must  write  a  pamphlet,  or  I  will  burst,"  he  says ;  we  think 
we  see  him  gasping  with  earnestness  as  he  utters  the  words. 
We  find  it  likewise  in  his  valor  and  open-faced  independence. 
He  longs  to  fight  the  Oxford  heretics,  "  as  in  a  saw-pit."   And 
he  has  a  clear  sympathy  for  the  nobleness  of  the  battle-field,  think- 
ing no  man  can  be  of  sound  human  feelings  without  sharing  it. 
Directing  attention  to  the  sphere  in   which  this   tireless 
energy  worked,  and  the  modes  in  which  it  exhibited  itself,  we 
are  called  first  to  observe  him  as  a  teacher.     Both  in  theory 
and  practice  he  is  here  admirable.     The  objects  he  aimed  at 
in  education  may  be  summed  up  in  two  words — character, 
power.    By  the  first  of  these  we  mean  complete  self-estimating, 
self-respecting  manhood;    by   the   second,    that   harmonious 
development  of  each  fliculty  of  the  mind,  that  raising  of  each 
capacity  into  the  condition  in  which  it  can  naturally,  health 
fully,  and  perfectly  perform  its  function,  which  is  attainable 


378  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

by  intellectual  culture.  He  avoided,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
fallacy,  that  a  man  is  not  fitly  educated  unless  he  is  made  mas- 
ter of  the  powers,  we  say  not  the  acquirements,  of  a  scholar ; 
that,  for  instance,  a  man  of  slight  intellectual  faculty,  like  How- 
ard, may  not  be  as  thoroughly  educated  in  character,  as  a  man 
of  high  intellectual  faculty  like  Bentley ;  he  shunned,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  far  more  palpable,  but  extremely  common 
error,  which  surely  has  exerted  an  unsuspected  influence  in  our 
modern  educational  improvements,  that  education  consists 
mainly  in  conveying  a  certain  amount  of  information  into  the 
mind. 

We  find  this  statement  embodied  in  two  brief  but  compre- 
hensive expressions  quoted  from  Arnold  by  Mr.  Stanley  :  first, 
"  If  there  be  any  thing  on  earth  which  is  truly  admirable,  it  is 
to  see  God's  wisdom  blessing  an  inferiority  of  natural  powers, 
where  they  have  been  honestly,  truly,  and  zealously  cultiva- 
ted ;"  second,  "  It  is  not  knowledge  but  the  means  of  gaining 
knowledge,  which  I  have  to  teach." 

As  his  theory  of  education  was  philosophic  in  its  soundness 
and  width,  his  practice  of  tuition  may  be  characterized  in  one 
word  as  marked  by  its  totality ;  it  embraced  him  as  a  whole ; 
it  was  in  his  step,  and  eye,  and  tone,  and  much  which  can  not 
be  even  indicated  j  the  pupils  saw  that  their  teacher  was  a 
true  man  and  Christian;  the  grasp  of  his  energy  they  felt 
upon  them  ;  they  knew  not  how,  but  the  very  air  seemed  per- 
vaded by  his  influence. 

That  continual  watchfulness  and  readiness  of  mind,  that 
never-flagging  energy,  that  clearness  and  compactness  of 
knowledge,  and  that  genial  sympathizing  insight  into  the 
youthful  mind,  which  are  demanded  in  the  practical  teacher, 
were  his  in  unusual  measure.  And  his  success  was  propor- 
tioned to  his  merits.     His  pupils  were  inspired  with  a  fine 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  3'79 

sympathy  -with  himself  in  carrying  on  the  business  of  the 
school ;  accustomed  to  be  treated  as  Christian  gentlemen 
whose  word  was  not  to  be  called  in  question,  they  learned 
to  shrink  from  meanness,  to  acquire  self-command,  and  to 
make  intelligence  and  nobleness  their  aims;  at  the  univer- 
sity, youths  from  other  quarters  might  excel  in  the  quick- 
ness, the  cleverness,  and,  it  might  even  at  times  happen, 
the  minute  accuracy,  of  school-boys ;  those  from  Rugby 
had  the  character,  the  thought,  the  deliberate  purpose,  of 
men. 

But  the  expansive  energies  of  Arnold  could  not  confine 
themselves  to  the  school.  Around  him  lay  the  world  in  a 
stirring  and  tumultuous  epoch,  with  its  questions  to  be  answer- 
ed, and  its  work  to  be  done.  He  was  not  a  man  to  be  struck 
dumb  by  the  one,  or  confounded  by  the  other.  Christian  him- 
self in  every  pulse  of  his  being,  believing  in  Christianity  as  a 
truth,  knowing  it  as  a  life,  and  recognizing  its  claim  to  pervade 
with  its  influence  every  province  of  human  affairs,  he  bent  all 
his  energies  to  effect  that  reform  which  it  professes  its  power 
to  work  in  nations.  We  speak  not  now  of  his  particular 
views  ;  we  look  merely  at  his  attitude  and  aim.  And  these 
present  a  spectacle  of  Christian  thoroughness  and  valor  which 
must  stir  every  heart  attuned  to  high  impulses.  He  knows 
no  fear,  he  will  listen  to  no  compromise.  To  the  world  he 
seems  even  turbulent ;  for  he  can  not  breathe  the  same  atmos- 
phere with  error,  but  must  instantly  unsheath  his  sword,  and 
rush  against  it :  there  is  a  flash  of  real  war-horse  fire  in  his 
eye ;  he  yearns  for  the  battle.  Words  fiill  from  him  which  a 
man  may  seize  and  treasure  up,  as  a  sort  of  diamond-dust  for 
M'hetting  and  burnishing  his  mental  armory.  "  I  do  not  under- 
stand how  the  times  can  help  bearing  what  an  honest  man  has 
the  resolution  to  do  !"     Ha !     The  opposition  of  the  wicked  to 


380  THOMAS     ^R  IT  OLD. 

Christianity  and  the  Christian  ministry,  he  regards  as  satis- 
factory, and  even  consoling — the  only  testimony  in  their  favor 
which  it  is  in  the  jDOwer  of  such  to  give.  He  feels  that  it  is  a 
grand  thing  to  fight  the  devil,  when  one's  mind  is  fairly  made 
up  as  to  the  identity  of  the  foe.  "  The  work  here  is  more  and 
more  engrossing  continually  ;  but  I  like  it  better  and  better  : 
it  has  all  the  interest  of  a  great  game  of  chess,  with  living 
creatures  for  pawns  and  pieces,  and  your  adversary,  in  plain 
English,  the  devil,"  etc.  This  is  a  different  attitude  from  Fos- 
ter's, though  that,  too,  was  sublime.  Foster  looked  over  the 
field  where  the  forces  of  the  enemy  were  ranged,  and  gazed 
into  the  eyes  of  their  "great  commander,"  with  stern  defiance, 
indeed,  but  with  a  tear  of  burning  grief  that  the  positions  of 
the  field  were  in  his  hands ;  Arnold's  eye  flashes  right  in  his 
face  with  utter  defiance,  but  also  with  a  certain  blasting  gleam 
of  triumphant  contempt;  he  longs  only  to  come  to  close 
quarters,  and,  with  the  sword  and  the  shield  given  him  from 
heaven's  armory,  wrest  the  victory  from  the  prince  of  the 
world.  It  is  always  the  word  "  onward  "  that  he  speaks ; 
it  is  ever  higher  that  he  will  have  the  banner  float ;  God  and  the 
angels  may  be  spectators,  but,  for  us,  up,  brothers,  and  at  them  ! 
Arnold  was  singularly  true  to  that  type  of  character  which 
is  recognized  as  in  a  peculiar  sense  English  ;  he  embodied  its 
indomitable  energy,  its  unpretending  honesty,  its  practical 
sense.  In  doing  work  he  will  be  unmatched ;  but  he  must 
clearly  see  what  is  the  work  to  be  done.  When  he  reaches 
the  Gallic  invasion  in  his  Roman  history,  he  must  commence 
the  study  of  the  Erse  language ;  but  he  never  finds  his  footing 
sure  among  the  abstractions  of  metaphysics  or  even  of  mathe- 
matics. He  attacks  the  evil  that  lies  to  his  hand.  He  pre- 
fers, in  conversation,  a  man  who  difl^ers  from  him  to  one  who 
agrees,  because  some  work  may  then  be  done,  and  they  end 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  381 

not  exactly  where  they  began.  lie  claims  no  right  or  power 
to  rule  the  empire  of  the  air,  and  radically  lacks  the  faculty 
of  building  air-carriages  for  a  life  time.  With  what  is  deemed 
dullness  in  Germany  and  sense  in  England, "  before  a  confessed 
and  unconquerable  difficulty  his  mind  reposed  as  quietly  as  in 
j)Ossession  of  a  discovered  truth." 

In  strict  and  beautiful  accordance  with  the  general  firmness 
and  health  of  his  distinctively  English  character,  was  the  love 
of  nature  which  he  displayed.  It  was  not  that  sympathy 
which  gives  full  occupation  to  the  soul,  and  becomes  the  busi- 
ness of  a  life ;  which  casts  over  nature  a  spirit-woven  web, 
of  sentiment  and  fantasy,  more  faintly  aerial  and  more 
delicately  tinted  than  a  vail  of  gossamer,  and  kindling  to  the 
eye  such  new  and  wondrous  colors,  that  men  gather  round  its 
possessor,  and  hail  him  a  poet.  He  could  not  anywise 
sympathize  with  Wordsworth  when  he  said,  that  the  meanest 
flower  that  lived  awoke  within  him  thoughts  that  were  too 
deep  for  tears.  This,  he  felt,  was  a  little  too  ethereal,  the 
spire  melting  into  the  mist,  the  strong,  clear  glance  of  a  manly 
love  fading  into  the  filmy  gaze  of  one  that  dreamed.  But  per- 
haps none  ever  illustrated  with  finer  precision  that  strong  and 
healthful  sympathy  with  nature,  which  is  a  desirable,  if  not  in- 
dispensable element  in  every  complete  and  harmonious  charac- 
ter; that  unaffected  delight  in  the  beautiful,  which  sheds  a 
dewy  and  flowery  freshness  over  earnest  devotion  to  the  good, 
and  wreathes  with  a  green  garland  the  brow  that  inflexibly  en- 
deavors after  the  true  ;  a  power  to  hear,  and  to  blend  with  the 
practical  energy  of  life,  those  unnumbered  lessons  which  are 
inscribed  on  nature's  varied  pageantry,  and  which  we  can  not 
doubt  that  God  intended  us  to  read.  With  the  healthful,  re- 
joicing, boyish  affection,  of  an  intensely  alive  and  happy  na- 
ture, he  expatiated  in  the  magnificent  heme  which  God  had 


382  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

hung  out  in  the  heavens  for  His  creature  man.  He  did  not 
look  upon  it,  as  it  is  the  duty  and  high  privilege  of  the  poet  to 
do,  with  the  feeling  that  it  was  his  work  to  reveal  its  wonders, 
and,  by  a  melody  that  leads  captive  every  heart,  turn  the 
eyes  of  men  to  behold  it ;  but  he  never  ceased  to  look  upon  it 
with  the  eye  of  one  who  felt  that  he  worked  better  in  the  con- 
sciousness that  he  dwelt  in  such  a  home,  and  knew  that  to  the 
unstopped  ear  of  man,  as  he  marches  o;i  the  general  journey 
of  life,  there  arises,  from  stream,  and  rock,  and  wood,  and 
gentle  fountain,  a  choral  melody,  to  inspire,  to  tranquilize,  to 
gladden.  It  was  just  the  ordinary  English  love  of  fields,  and 
hills,^and  sunbeams,  sublimed  into  intensity.  His  eye  kindles 
grandly  as  he  sees  the  sun  pouring  his  broad,  bright,  parting 
smile  over  the  Grampians,  seeming  to  "  tread  on  thrones ;"  he 
has  watched  the  Alps  at  eventide,  and  remembers  forever  the 
sublime  appearance  of  their  peaks  "  upon  a  sky  so  glowing 
with  the  sunset,  that,  instead  of  looking  white  from  their  snow, 
they  were  like  the  teeth  of  a  saw  upon  a  plate  of  red-hot  iron, 
all  deep  and  black  ;"  he  has  never  done  looking  at  the  great 
running  rivers,  which  he  regards  as-  the  most  beautiful  objects 
in  nature  ;  the  wild-flowers  on  the  mountain  sides  are,  he  tells 
us,  his  music;  it  is  Arnold  in  his  kindliest,  but  not  least 
characteristic  aspect,  that  we  see,  as  we  mark  him  walking  by 
nis  wife's  pony  in  sunny  English  afternoons,  watching  every 
phenomenon  of  nature,  and  doubling  his  joy  by  the  sympathy 
of  his  own  Mary. 

To  form  an  adequate  idea  of  the  nature  of  Arnold's  relig- 
ious life,  it  is  necessary  to  conceive  fully  that  which  was  its 
central  point,  his  close,  conscious,  and  ever  realized  union  and 
friendship  with  the  Lord  Jesus.  His  perceptions  were  all 
clear,  his  emotions  warm ;  he  realized,  with  vivid  distinctness, 
the  living  manhood  of  Jesus,  and  all  that  warm  affection  which 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  383 

found  such  dear  employment  in  embracing  his  earthly  friends, 
clung  with  exhaustlcss  enjoyment  and  perpetual  freshness  to 
the  Divine  ]\Ian,  whom  as  a  friend  he  had  in  heaven.  Of 
Jesus  he  ever  thought ;  the  outwelling  of  tender  love  toward 
Him  shed  over  the  strong  framework  of  his  character  that 
beautiful  and  gentle  light  which  rests  on  the  soul  of  him  who 
has  even  one  bosom  friend ;  for,  in  the  throwing  wide  open  of 
the  breast  to  the  eyes  of  another,  in  reposing  perfectly  in  his 
honor,  wisdom,  and  love,  in  humbly,  yet  joyously  knowing 
that  he  is  every  way  worthy  of  your  total  affection,  there  is 
implied  such  a  power  of  breaking  the  chords  that  bind  you  to 
self,  such  a  power  to  identify  yourself  with  another,  to  look 
upon  your  whole  character  through  his  eyes,  and  estimate 
yourself  by  his  fully  appreciated  and  dearly  prized  excellence, 
that  a  noble  modesty,  and  mildness,  and  manly  tenderness, 
must  more  and  more  speak  its  influence,  in  voice,  mien,  and 
action.  This,  we  say,  is  the  natural  influence  of  pure  human 
friendship.  And  in  Jesus,  Arnold  found,  in  faultless  perfec- 
tion, all  he  sought  in  an  earthly  friend.  His  eye  went  right 
across  the  intervening  ages  to  look  into  the  eyes  of  the 
Saviour ;  he  saw  there  that  wisdom  which  silenced  the  gain- 
sayer,  that  calm  before  which  the  tempest  became  still,  that 
love  which  beamed  through  tears  upon  the  weeping  sisters  by 
the  grave  of  Lazarus ;  he  seemed  to  grasp  that  hand  which 
supported  Peter  among  the  waves,  and  whose  touch  lit  the 
seared  eyeball.  Or  his  eye  pierced  beyond  the  atmosphere 
of  earth  altogether:  he  felt  himself  walking  by  the  river  of  life, 
in  the  midst  of  the  Paradise  of  God ;  and  here,  too,  he  saw 
that  same  Jesus,  with  those  same  human  features  and  that 
same  human  smile ;  and  when,  in  the  overflowing  fullness  of 
his  heart,  every  expression  of  affection  that  might  pass  be- 
tween earthly  friends  failed  to  express  his  emotion,  he  could, 


384  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

without  scruple  and  with  speechless  joyfulness,  bow  down  and 
worship  Him.  We  noted  that  his  heart  had  yearned  after  one 
in  the  image  of  God,  and  yet  in  the  image  of  man,  whom  he 
could  worship ;  we  found  in  that  yearning  the  expression  of  a 
want  common  to  humanity,  and  an  argument  against  Unita- 
rianism ;  and  now,  when  we  find  the  yearning  satisfied,  we 
bid  every  Unitarian  say,  whether  this  blessed  influence  that 
hallows  his  whole  life  is  a  delusion,  and  whether  such  warm 
and  living  emotions  could  flow  from  the  sole  and  irrealizable 
conception  of  the  infinite,  the  absolute,  the  one. 

But  we  must  look  at  Arnold  in  one  other  and  final  aspect ; 
or  rather  we  must  look  at  him  where  every  other  aspect  is 
seen  under  a  mellowing  light,  and  all  his  joys  blend  in  one 
perfect  harmony.  We  have  not  yet  looked  into  his  home ; 
and,  without  any  exaggeration,  we  may  say,  it  was  a  sight  for 
an  angel's  eye.  It  warms  one's  heart  to  think  of  his  marriage 
and  his  domestic  circle ;  he  was  so  precisely  fitted  for  house- 
hold joys.  There  is  something  comforting  in  the  absolute  de- 
monstration, which  his  intense  relish  of  life  affords,  that,  bad 
as  the  world  may  be,  and  dismal  as  are  the  aspects  of  human 
society,  there  is  yet  a  distinct  possibility,  beneath  the  stars,  of 
enjoyment,  serene  from  its  very  intensity,  perfectly  apart 
from  the  restless  excitement  of  worldliness,  or  the  melancholy 
delirium  of  passion.  His  home  was  a  scene  of  unbroken,  of 
almost  ecstatic  joy  ;  we  are  continually  reminded  of  its  vicini- 
ty in  perusing  his  biography ;  stray  gleams  from  its  ever-burn- 
ing hearth  are  perpetually  wandering  over  his  correspondence. 
With  an  earnestness  that  is  the  very  voice  of  the  heart,  he  ex- 
claims, "  My  wife  is  well,  thank  God,"  and  we  are  strangely 
impressed  with  the  unconscious  but  true  sublimity  of  his 
words,  when  he  speaks  of  the  "  almost  awful  happiness  of  his 
domestic  life." 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  385 

It  has,  in  all  ages,  been  a  prerogative  of  Christianity  to  plant 
and  foster  domestic  feeling  and  felicities.  We  would  figure 
the  religion  of  Jesus,  as  walking  among  men  and  offering  them 
two  great  boons  ;  in  one  hand  she  holds  the  treasures  of  im- 
mortality, in  the  other  are  the  mild  blessings  of  home.  Phi- 
losophy has  ever  been  high,  remote,  and  unparticipating ;  in 
her  glittering  robes,  she  treads  in  majesty  along  the  high 
places  of  the  world,  amid  a  light  that  scarce  mingles  with 
earth's  atmosphere,  but  falls  on  the  eternal  snow,  a  cold,  intel- 
lectual light,  which  has  never  yet  brightened  the  cloud  of  un- 
speakable sadness  resting  on  her  brow.  A  high  task  is  hers, 
and  we  shall  pay  her  all  honor,  but  let  us  dwell  rather  with 
Christianity  in  the  valleys  and  in  the  clefts  of  the  rock,  where 
she  spreads  the  nuptial  couch,  and  lights  the  household  fire. 
We  come  now  briefly  to  notice  one  or  two  of  Arnold's  princi- 
pal opinions. 

Arnold  of  Rugby  will  ever  be  known  as  a  foremost  cham- 
pion of  the  belief  that  church  and  state  are  identical.  He  re- 
garded Christianity  as  the  true  test  of  citizenship,  and  at  once 
withdrew  from  the  London  University,  when  he  found  that  his 
proposal  for  including  Scripture  in  the  entrance  examination 
was  not  to  be  acceded  to.  He  earnestly  opposed  the  very 
idea  of  a  Christian  priesthood,  as  distinguished  from  a  Chris- 
tian laity  ;  he  considered  discipline  strictly  and  appropriately  a 
civil  penalty ;  the  idea  of  government  propounded  by  War- 
burton,  that  it  is  a  mere  protective  and  legislative  force,  he 
deemed  utterly  erroneous.  Arguing  that  the  end  of  a  nation, 
as  of  an  individual,  must  be  the  glory  of  God  in  its  own 
greatest  happiness,  he  asserted  that  the  sovereign  power,  that 
from  which  there  was  no  appeal,  must  without  a  solecism  and 
almost  a  contradiction,  be  a  religious  power,  in  a  Christian 
country,  of  course  a  Christian  power.     Let  there,  he  proposed, 

17 


BS6  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

be  framed  some  general  declaration  of  belief  in  Christianity, 
embracing  the  recognition  of  the  Trinity,  the  inspiration  of 
Scripture,  and  certain  other  grand  leading  doctrines ;  let  a  cer- 
tain diversity  be  permitted  in  the  forms  of  worship  ;  let  the 
churches  be  occupied  by  ministers  of  various  shades  of  belief 
and  vaiious  preference  of  form,  in  the  several  parts  of  the 
Lord's  day ;  let  the  king  be  recognized  as  the  head  of  the 
church  on  earth ;  and  let  all  members  of  the  government, 
from  premier  to  constable,  be  ministers  of  the  church-state. 

Such  was  his  scheme  :  it  may  well,  we  think,  be  regarded 
with  wonder.  It  is  true  that  he  did  not  look  upon  it  as  at 
once  realizable ;  it  is  a  fact  that  he  cared  little  for  any  impos- 
ing aspect  which  might  result  from  uniformity,  if  reality  were 
sacrificed  to  attain  it ;  yet  it  is  also  unquestionable  that  no  idea 
lay  nearer  his  heart  than  the  identity  of  church  and  state,  and 
the  importance  of  comprehensiveness  in  standards  of  belief; 
while  no  desire  moved  him  more  strongly  than  the  instant  and 
earnest  promulgation  of  his  views  on  these  subjects.  Now  wc 
deem  it  unnecessary  to  enter  at  length  into  the  examination 
of  the  scheme,  it  is  so  absolutely  certain  that  it  will  not  have 
soon  to  be  opposed  in  practice.  We  shall  not  test  it  scriptur- 
ally.  That  we  deem  unnecessary,  since  the  firm  grasp  of  com- 
mon sense  pulls  it  to  pieces. 

It  were  improper,  however,  to  pass  it  by  altogether  without 
remark :  it  contains  too  much  truth  to  render  it  a  useless  or 
superfluous  task  to  combat  its  error.  Several  of  its  minor 
propositions,  too,  are  extremely  popular  in  our  day.  Particu- 
larly is  this  true  of  the  proposal  it  embraces,  to  introduce  the 
external  morality  of  a  respectable  life  in  place  of  any  allusion, 
tacit  or  express,  to  particular  points  of  intellectual  belief,  as  a 
test  of  church  membership.  Few  general  declarations  are 
hailed  with  warmer  enthusiasm  than  that  which  affirms  it  to 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  387 

be  the  panacea  for  our  ecclesiastical  ills,  to  remove  entirely,  or 
to  attenuate  until  all  obstructing  definitcness  is  removed,  the 
dogmatic  creeds  of  our  churches ;  substituting  some  easy  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  and  a  consideration 
of  individual  character.  Not  doctrine,  but  life ;  such  is  the  cry 
of  thousands.  Combined  with  an  earnest  desire,  and  we  deeply 
honor  and  defer  to  such  desire,  for  unity  and  uniformity  among 
the  churches,  this  idea  leads  men  of  deep  piety,  and  accustomed 
to  reflect  on  the  present  aspect  of  tilings,  to  propose  such  modi- 
fication of  our  creeds  as  would  make  Presbyterians  and  Epis- 
copaliaus  one,  and  it  might  even  be,  draw  an  immense  contri- 
bution from  Rome ;  combined  with  a  desire  to  share  the  ease 
and  respectability  of  national  establishment,  and  a  distaste  for 
all  religious  controversy,  it  leads  men  of  unsettled  or  lati- 
tudinarian  opinions  to  hope  that  their  general,  and,  as  it  were, 
complimentary  recognition  of  Christianity  will  procure  them 
the  name  and  honor  of  Christians.  We  think  the  idea  is 
erroneous,  and  would  offer  a  few  remarks  on  the  subject. 

First,  then,  we  call  attention  to  that  principle,  clearly  dis- 
cernible, and  of  unbounded  range  in  our  present  economy, 
which  may  be  generally  designated.  Division  of  labor :  that 
principle  which  seeks  the  attainment  of  results  by  the  balanc- 
ing of  forces,  the  harmony  of  antagonisms.  The  preference 
and  pre-eminence  which  each  individual  accords  to  his  own 
profession  are  certainly  delusions ;  yet  is  it  manifest  that  these 
and  similar  delusions  produce  expedition  and  heartiness  in  the 
everal  departments  of  human  work.  Boldly  extend  the  ap- 
plication of  our  principle :  it  is  scarce  possible  to  extend  it  too 
far.  It  will  show  the  Almighty  Governor  of  the  world,  in  the 
inscrutable  wisdom  of  His  providence,  educing  in  man's  history 
the  greatest  good  possible  to  a  free  but  fallen  will ;  it  will  lead 
us  to  discern  that  many  ideas  of  vital  moment  are  kept  alive 


388  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

by  the  jealous  circumscriptive  zeal  of  sects,  and  that  a  general 
ardor  and  activity  are  maintained  by  the  really  noble  emula' 
tion  of  bodies  making,  though  by  different  paths,  for  one  goal ; 
whereas,  otherwise,  both  might  be  covered  up  in  the  whited 
sepulcher  of  a  vast  and  lifeless  uniformity.  We  are  fallen  ^ 
we  can  not,  in  speaking  of  man,  take  a  step  without  acknowl- 
edging that.  Truth  does  not  here  embrace  the  world  like  the 
great  tidal  wave,  sweeping  along  in  majestic  calmness  of  power- 
and  filling  every  little  creek  and  estuary  ;  truth  rather  descends 
fertilizing  in  many  rills,  from  the  mountain  side ;  and  it  is  bet- 
ter that  it  descends  for  the  present  even  so,  than  that  it  should 
flow  in  one  broad  river,  leaving  an  arid  desert  over  all  the 
land,  save  on  its  immediate  banks.  Were  Christian  zeal  in- 
creased in  each  of  the  Christian  sects,  the  earth  would  revive 
and  bring  forth  fair  flowers  and  fruits ;  but,  by  the  draining  of 
them  all  into  one  huge  reservoir,  no  good  would  for  the  present 
be  done. 

But,  next,  we  beg  those  we  oppose  to  consider  earnestly  the 
mtense  individuality  of  Christianity ;  its  habit  of  starting,  in 
all  its  reforms,  from  the  unit  and  not  from  the  mass.  Arnold 
knew  the  importance  of  that  word — "The  kingdom  of  God  is 
within  you ;"  but  we  can  not  think  that  he  kept  it  in  view 
with  sufficient  constancy  and  earnestness.  By  the  conversion 
of  individuals  the  world  will  be  regenerated,  and  not  other- 
wise. This  does  not  make  the  church,  in  its  visible  form  and 
appointments,  of  slight  importance,  but  it  points  out  its  grand 
duty,  that  of  converting  men,  and  shows  the  vanity  of  looking 
for  a  substitute  for  personal  godliness  in  any  mechanism  or  ap- 
paratus. The  difficulty  here  presented  is  stupendous ;  but  it 
is  precisely  the  one  which  must  be  met.  Easy  were  it  to  re 
new  mankind,  and  change  the  face  of  the  world,  if  it  could  be 
done  in  a  public  way,  by  the  devising  of  some  magnificent  and 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  389 

politic  scheme  of  government ;  then  might  the  corner-stone  of 
the  new  world  be  brought  out  in  haste,  and,  indeed,  with  shout- 
ing (for  should  not  loe  have  found  it?) ;  but  the  kingdom  of 
God  Cometh  not  with  observation :  it  is  the  silent  unseen  work, 
in  the  quiet  parish,  in  the  quieter  heart,  that  advances  it ;  there 
is  no  waving  of  banners,  no  triumph  of  human  wisdom.  And 
its  final  glories  will  come  when  the  Sun  of  the  latter  morn  is 
rising :  the  golden  walls  of  the  New  Jerusalem  will  be  cast  in 
heaven. 

And  we  must  urgently  press  the  question.  What  sort  of  uni- 
ty or  uniformity  is  desired  ?  A  reality  or  a  sham  ?  A  unity 
which  will  give  clearness  and  wisdom  in  counsel,  and  prompt 
decision  in  action,  which  will  fan  gently  the  ranks  of  a  sympa- 
thizing, consciously  agreeing  people,  each  individual  strength- 
ening his  neighbor's  hand,  or  a  flaring,  meaningless  bamier, 
toward  which  every  man  looks  with  anxious  suspicion,  not 
knowing  whither  it  leads — a  blazoned  pretense,  which  makes 
each  man  unaware  with  whom  he  acts,  and  leaves  him  in  the 
torment  of  loneliness,  rendered  threefold  more  intolerable  by 
the  absence  of  that  clearness  of  vision,  and  distinctness  of  aim, 
which  redeem  the  evils  of  positive  singularity  of  belief — a  per- 
plexing and  indefinable  Delphic  enigma,  whose  highest  end  is 
that  ever  contemptible  one,  to  save  appearances  1 

Supposing  any  such  scheme  as  Arnold's  were  carried  into 
effect  to-morrow,  what  were  gained  1  Surely  it  were  no  addi- 
tional union,  that  ministers  who  were  wont  to  preach  in  differ- 
ent places  of  worship,  officiated  at  different  times,  and  to  dif- 
ferent congregations,  in  the  same  edifice ;  surely  it  cobld  not 
be  expected  that  a  month  would  pass  over  without  discomfort 
and  iisruption  ;  surely  no  additional  force  would  be  conferred 
upon  'ndividual  effort  by  its  being  all  ranged  under  this  totter- 
ing standard  of  patchwork  unity.     What  advantage  would  re 


390  ^  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

suit  in  the  assailing  of  adversaries  is  so  slight  as  to  be  almost 
impalpable  even  to  imagination ;  -svhile  vast  additional  contempt 
would  be  hurled  against  any  such  church,  by  a  body  of  assail- 
ants more  closely  united  than  ever.  A  church  acts  through 
her  members  ;  Christianize  your  members  and  you  invigorate 
your  church ;  but  that  some  unaccountable  power  would  arise 
from  furnishing  members  with  a  huge  vapor-built  abstraction 
called  a  church,  is  surely  incredible. 

This  whole  idea,  we  suspect,  contradicts  and  outrages  cer- 
tain of  the  deepest,  noblest,  and  most  ancient  instincts  of  man. 
To  purify  the  banner  of  truth,  to  leave  no  stain  on  the 
stars  beaming  there,  and  then  to  strive,  in  the  face  of  scorn 
and  hatred,  to  draw  men  around  it  and  to  carry  it  over  the 
world ; — these  are  the  perpetually  noble  aims  of  men.  To 
inscribe  it  with  an  ambiguous  legend,  to  blot  and  stain  its 
stars,  to  exclaim  that  it  is  of  slight  consequence  that  men 
disbelieve  in  it,  if  they  only  follow  it ; — these  are  no  sublime 
objects  at  all. 

It  is  proper  next  to  obviate  difficulty,  by  observing  that  all 
Arnold's  reasoning  from  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul,  and  that  of 
similar  arguers,  even  if  we  granted  it  to  be  unassailable  on  its 
own  ground,  which  we  by  no  means  do,  can  be  met  by  this 
altogether  preliminary  consideration;  That  the  Epistles  of 
Paul,  and  all  the  Epistles  of  the  New  Testament,  are  addressed 
to  those  already  in  the  Christian  Church,  and  supposed,  ^pso 
facto^  to  have  acceded  to  the  scheme  of  Christian  doctrine  pro- 
pounded by  the  Apostles.  In  the  Church,  assuredly,  attention 
was  directed  to  the  conduct;  although  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  believe  that,  since  the  enforcement  of  doctrinal  points  is  so 
emphatic  and  so  habitually  take  the  lead  in  Paul's  Epistles, 
he  would  not  have  regarded  the  rejection  of  any  material  por- 
tion of  Christian  doctrine  an  adequate  reason  for  refusal  of  the 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  391 

benefits  of  Christian  communion ;  but,  even  overlooking  this 
and  his  express  pronunciation  of  a  curse  upon  him  who  preach- 
ed any  other  doctrine  than  he  had  delivered,  we  say  that  it  is 
not  to  the  internal  exercise  of  church  discipline,  but  to  the 
original  admission  into  the  church,  that  appeal  must  be  made. 
And  in  this  case,  how  brief  soever  the  formula  might  be,  it 
had  no  reference  to  the  life,  but  to  the  faith.  It  was  the  be- 
lieving acceptance  of  Christ  which  entitled  any  one  to  baptism. 
And  if  the  simple  declaration  of  belief  in  Christ  were  now  as 
little  ambiguous  as  it  was  then,  the  briefness  of  the  formula, 
as  well  as  its  essential  characteristic,  might  be  retained ;  but 
when  a  general  declaration  comes  simply  to  nothing,  when  it 
would  admit  all  men,  from  Unitarians  to  Methodists,  who 
chose  to  name  the  name  of  Christ,  your  only  choice,  if  you 
retain  the  essential  nature  of  the  early  declaration  by  wliich  a 
man  was  admitted  to  the  Church  of  Christ,  is,  to  make  it  more 
explicit. 

We  next  demand,  on  the  part  of  all  those  whose  perpetual 
cry  is  against  creeds,  to  weigh  well  the  question,  whether  it  is 
not  really  more  in  consistence  wath  the  general  constitution  of 
human  affairs,  that  a  body  of  men  should  unite  themselves 
under  a  test  of  doctrine,  than  a  test  of  conduct.  There  is  no 
fact  more  certain,  or  more  generally  recognized,  than  this. 
That  the  spiritual  life  of  a  man,  his  internal  world  of  belief, 
opinion,  feeling,  is  behind  and  determinative  of  his  spoken  or 
acted  life.  "  False  action,"  remarks  Mr.  Carlyle,  "  is  the  fruit 
of  false  speculation ;  let  the  spirit  of  society  be  free  and  strong, 
that  is  to  say,  let  true  principles  inspire  the  members  of  society, 
then  neither  can  disorders  accumulate  in  its  practice ;"  etc. 
If  you  wish  to  know  a  man  thoroughly,  you  must  know  his 
belief:  as  he  thinks  in  his  heart  so  is  he.  No  great  revolution 
in  man's  external  life  ever  took  place  without  originating  in 


892  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

this  internal  religion ;  all  religions  and  philosophies  address 
man  as  a  reasoning,  believing,  not  alone  as  an  acting  creature ; 
and  the  fact  holds  eminently  good  in  the  case  of  Christianity, 
which  came  to  the  world  with  salvation  by  faith  in  Christ, 
wrought  by  the  Spirit  of  God  in  the  inner  man.  It  may  be 
known,  indeed,  from  life,  whether  profession  is  faithful ;  if 
one  comes  with  "  Lord,  Lord,"  on  his  lips,  you  may  know 
by  his  fruits,  you  have  no  other  means  of  knowing  than 
by  his  fruits,  whether  he  really  believes  in  the  Lord  or  no. 
But  if  he  declines  even  this  preliminary  confession,  if  he  can 
not  say,  in  terms  admitting  of  no  ambiguity,  that  his  faith  is 
the  Christian,  he  must  remain  without  the  pale  of  your  church, 
and  you  have  no  power  or  right  to  control  either  his  beliefs 
or  actions. 

Last  of  all,  we  would  remind  those  who  believe  that  instant 
and  universal  harmony  would  arise  from  an  appeal  to  a  stand- 
ard of  life  in  our  determination  of  the  question  of  church  mem- 
bership, that  there  are  facts  in  ecclesiastical  history  to  render 
their  position  more  than  doubtful.  We  would  commend  to 
them  the  study  of  the  history  of  Menno  Simonis  and  his  fol- 
lowers, in  the  period  following  the  Reformation.  Whatever 
lessons  we  may  or  may  not  draw  from  that  history,  we  can 
not  fail  to  draw  this :  That  to  settle  the  standard  of  conduct  will 
be  as  fruitful  a  source  of  disagreement,  as  it  has  been  to  uphold 
that  of  belief.  You  will  again  have  your  lax  and  more  lax, 
your  old  and  new,  your  hot  and  cold,  your  good,  bad,  and  in- 
different (the  latter  tending  to  multiply)  ;  in  one  word,  you 
will  find  that  the  formula  for  absolute  concord  in  any  great 
body  of  men  is  still  in  that  undiscovered  region  where  lie  the 
philosopher's  stone  and  the  elixir  vit^.  Unless,  indeed,  you 
are  willing,  for  uniformity,  to  sacrifice  every  thing  else ;  there 
is  one  magic'.an  whose  wand  will  give  you  uniformity  enough, 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  393 

on  his  own  conditions ;  will  you  consent  that  your  church  be 
touched  by  the  mace  of  Death  1  The  fact  is,  that  we  must 
bear  in  mind  what  we  may  call  the  melancholy  immortality, 
the  resurgent  Phoenix  nature  of  error.  Looking  on  former 
ages,  we  can  discern,  perhaps,  an  excessive  tendency  to  rely 
upon  creeds ;  this  perished,  but,  in  dying,  gave  birth  to  what 
is  equally  an  error,  the  disposition  altogether  to  underrate 
them.  Surely  it  is  unwise  to  cast  from  us  the  fruit  of 
the  intellectual  toil  of  centuries ;  if  it  is  true  that  creeds 
can  not  save  us,  is  it  not  a  still  more  absurd  mistake  to 
conceive  that  theological  indefiniteness  will  prove  a  salve  for 
all  our  ills  1 

We  think  we  reach  the  source  at  once  of  Arnold's  general 
misconception  on  these  subjects,  and  of  much  of  the  prevalent 
error  regarding  them,  by  considering  the  slight  hint  given 
when  he  happens  to  speak  of  "  Sectarianism,  that  worst  and 
most  mischievous  idol  by  w^hich  Christ's  Church  has  ever  been 
plagued."  This  is  at  the  very  root  of  the  matter,  and  deserves 
especial  consideration.  For  it  is  absolutely  certain  that  there 
is  a  deeper  evil  than  Sectarianism  in  the  Church  of  Christ ; 
there  is,  in  all  ages,  that  tendency  of  poor  drowsy  humanity 
to  fall  asleep  and  hide  its  eyes  from  the  celestial  radiance ; 
there  is  that  stagnation,  that  indifference,  that  death,  wrapping 
itself  in  various  coverings — of  loyalty  to  man,  of  custom,  of 
respectability — against  which  all  that  is  good  in  Sectarianism 
has  been  the  rebellion  and  resistance.  Who,  with  the  Bible 
in  his  hand,  and  the  history  of  the  Church  to  read  by  its  light, 
can  fail  to  discern,  what,  indeed,  has  been  seen  by  a  searching 
eye  which  has  yet,  alas  !  looked  away  from  the  Cross  to  some 
other  hope,  that  it  is  precisely  the  heavenly  nature  of  Chris- 
tianity as  an  individual  work,  its  perennial  and  essential  supe- 
riority to  any  form  of  belief  or  mode  of  practice,  to  any  stand- 
17* 


S94e  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

Rid  in  morals  or  attainment  in  life,  which  can  be  asserted  of  a 
class,  or  transmitted  by  descent,  which  has  nj^cessitated  the 
phenomenon,  startling  at  first,  but,  when  well  examined,  highly 
encouraging,  that  its  every  great  revival  has  occasioned  di- 
vision and  debate.  Christianity  has  been  a  struggling  light,  a 
fermenting  leaven,  a  purging  flame  ;  at  its  every  revival,  men 
have  striven,  as  it  were,  to  crystallize  it  and  still  keep  it  hot, 
whereas  it  has  indeed  crystallized,  but  instantly  began  to  cool. 
Were  it  not  for  Sectarianism,  would  not  certain  churches  have 
become  absolutely  dead — decayed  willow-trunks,  hollow,  dry 
as  tinder,  hoary  yet  not  venerable  1  That  divisiveness  is  in 
its  nature  bad,  we  were  certainly  the  last  to  deny  ;  that  the 
strength  of  union  is  so  great,  that  the  Christian  ought  to  look  well 
ere  he  foregoes  it,  is  also  true  ;  yet  we  must  believe  that,  when 
our  Lord  Jesus  spoke  of  his  bringing  division  into  the  world, 
his  eye  glanced  over  the  whole  interval  between  that  hour  and 
the  millennium,  and  that,  though  the  unspeakable  peace  which 
He  breathed  over  his  disciples  ere  departing  from  them  is 
ever  to  be  sought  after  by  the  Church,  and  may  at  times  bliss- 
fully envelop  it  as  it  wraps  in  its  ethereal  atmosphere  the  in- 
dividual soul,  yet  it  can  not  hope  for  unbroken  repose  until 
it  is  touched  by  the  rays  of  the  latter  morning.  And  this  fact 
is  of  extreme  importance,  for  instruction,  for  warning,  for 
consolation.  It  is  well  that  men  be  constantly  reminded 
that  Christianity  is,  once  for  all,  essentially  and  eternally  dif- 
ferent from  a  power  of  respectability ;  that  it  has  a  peren- 
nial tendency  to  turn  this  world  upside  down,  that  it  raises 
the  soul  into  a  region  of  other  and  loftier  feelings  and  habi- 
tudes than  can  be  attained  by  the  embracing  of  any  system 
or  the  following  of  any  rules,  that  it  is  a  walk  of  tribulation 
gloomy  with  the  frowns  of  kinsman  and  fellow-citizen.  Chris- 
tianity is  a  personal,  real,  and  even  av*^ful  agency,  and  no 


TUOIAAS     ARNOLD.  395 

yearning  for  peace  must  be  permitted  to  neutralize  the  eflect 
of  this  consideration. 

Though  there  is  thus  much  to  be  questioned  in  Dr.  Arnold's 
views  on  churches  and  creeds,  we  must  again  affirm,  and  with 
emphasis,  that  there  was  embodied  in  these  views  a  great 
amount  of  invaluable  truth.  The  prominence  he  gave  to  the 
great  fact  that  priesthood,  in  all  relating  to  meditation,  inter- 
cession, or  peculiar  hereditary  privilege,  found  its  completion 
and  conclusion  in  Christ,  is  sufficient  of  itself  to  im.part  value 
to  his  system.  There  is,  perhaps,  no  idea  in  the  circle  of 
theologic  truth  more  glorious  or  pregnant  than  this.  That 
every  member  of  Christ's  mystical  body,  His  Church,  is  a 
king  and  priest  to  God ;  that  converted  men  are  now  God's 
Levitical  tribe  on  earth,  witnessing  for  Him  before  the  world, 
and  bearing  censers  filled  with  fire  from  off  the  heavenly  altar ; 
that  no  Christian,  whatever  his  sphere,  can  absolve  himself 
from  the  responsibility  and  duty  of  preaching  Christ  in  his  life 
and  conversation ;  that  the  clergy  have  no  power  as  distinguished 
from  the  Church,  and  are  simply  that  part  of  it  set  aside, 
as  fitted  in  a  more  marked  degree  than  the  others,  to  preach 
and  to  rule  ; — these  and  kindred  ideas  would,  if  they  pervaded 
the  minds  of  Christian  nations,  so  completely  dissipate  at  once 
all  superstitious  reverence  toward  the  pastorate,  and  all  class 
opposition  to  it — would  shed  such  a  spirit  of  true  internal 
unity,  and  harmonious,  intelligent  content  through  our  churches 
— would  animate  to  such  fresh  and  far-extended  zeal  in  the 
efforts  of  all  to  spread  the  Gospel  of  our  Lord,  that  no  earnest- 
less,  no  iteration,  can  be  excessive,  in  their  advocacy  and  de- 
monstration. All  the  writings,  too,  of  this  truly  Christian 
man,  whether  on  this  or  on  other  subjects,  proclaim  to  the 
world  the  sad  fact  that  Christianity  has  yet  but  slightly  leav- 


396  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

ened  its  affairs,  and  call  for  a  thorough  penetration  by  its 
spirit  of  every  province  of  things. 

Contemplating  tne  whole  phenomenon  of  Arnold's  belief  in 
this  church-state,  we  can  not  but  conclude  that  he  fell  into  that 
mistake  of  noble  minds,  to  represent  the  world  as  by  no 
means  in  so  ruined  a  condition  as  has  been  deemed,  and  hope 
for  speedy  amendment,  by  simple  declaration  of  error,  an» 
proclamation  of  truth.  Nature  seems,  as  it  were,  to  kindl 
this  hope,  that  the  young  and  ardent  may  go  in  full  heart  to 
the  work,  and  not  leave  the  world  to  absolute  stagnation  and 
death.  Had  Luther,  when  he  felt  the  giant  stirrings  of  the 
young  life  in  his  bosom,  been  permitted  to  catch  a  glimpse  of 
those  griefs  and  forebodings,  with  which,  in  his  latter  days,  he 
was  apt  to  regard  the  state  of  the  world,  his  hand  had  scarce 
been  steady  enough  to  hold  that  pen  whose  end  shook  the 
miter  in  the  Palace  of  the  Seven  Hills.  The  glory  of  exultant 
hope  gleams  over  Milton's  earlier  page,  yet  he  lived  to  mourn 
the  evil  days  on  which  he  had  fallen,  and  to  shadow  forth  his 
own  stern  sorrows  in  Samson  Agonistes.  All  great  and  noble 
souls  seemed  to  have  begun  their  work  in  hope,  and  ended  it 
in  sorrow !  Arnold  could  not  even  have  given  utterance  to 
his  scheme  as  a  present  measure,  without  conceiving  more 
favorably  of  men  than  their  state  warranted. 

When  death  overtook  him  he  was,  of  course,  as  far  from  the 
attainment  as  ever.  Toward  the  end  he  said  : — "  When  I 
think  of  the  Church,  I  could  sit  down  and  pine  and  die."  He 
retained  the  idea  to  the  last,  but  was  beginning  to  have  mis- 
givings. "I  am  myself  so  much  inclined  to  the  idea  of  a 
strong  social  bond,  that  I  ought  not  to  be  suspected  of  any 
tendency  to  anarchy ;  yet  I  am  beginning  to  think  that  the 
idea  may  be  overstrained,  and  that  this  attempt  to  merge  the 
soul  und  will  of  the  individual  man  in  the  general  body  is, 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  397 

when  fully  developed,  contrary  to  the  very  essence  of  Chris- 
tianity. After  all,  it  is  the  individual  soul  that  must  be  saved, 
and  it  is  that  which  is  addressed  in  the  Gospel."  And  again, 
she rtly  before  his  death:  "I  feel  so  deeply  the  danger  and 
evil  of  the  flilse  system,  that  despairing  of  seeing  the  true 
Church  restored,  I  am  disposed  to  cling,  not  from  choice,  but 
necessity,  to  the  Protestant  tendency  of  laying  the  whole 
stress  on  Christian  religion,  and  adjourning  the  notion  of 
Church  sine  diey  This  certainly  is  in  the  right  direction  ;  in 
conformity  with  the  spirit  not  only  of  the  Reformation,  but  of 
the  New  Testament.  Consider,  once  more,  the  close  personal 
dealing  of  our  Saviour's  discourses,  and  the  burning  earnest- 
ness of  Paul's  discussion  and  enforcement  of  the  points  per- 
taining to  individual  salvation  in  his  several  epistles,  and  this 
must  become  evident.  The  Old  Testament  dealt  with  systems 
and  nationalities ;  the  New  Testament  deals  with  individual 
conversion,  with  individual  life :  the  old  dispensation  had  its 
kingdom  of  Israel,  seen  among  the  nations  as  a  cluster  of 
beams  falling  from  heaven  on  one  spot,  in  a  dark  weltering 
sea  ;  the  new  dispensation  has  its  kingdom  of  God,  all  noise- 
less and  unobserved,  in  the  individual  heart :  the  old  dispensa- 
tion had  its  temple  on  Moriah,  crowning  the  mountain  with 
gold,  and  adorned  with  the  richest  and  rarest  workmanship  of 
the  ancient  world ;  the  new  dispensation  has  the  soul  of  man 
for  its  temple,  viewless,  and,  to  the  unpurified,  unennobled 
thought,  unimposing,  yet  all-containing  and  everlasting.  It  is 
an  unseen,  a  spiritual  sublimity  that  Christianity  aims  at ;  its 
ineffable  holiness  is  discerned  in  the  fict  that  it  enrobes  the 
soul  in  an  immortality  which  can  even  now  be  recognized  to 
hold  more  of  heaven  than  of  earth,  and  to  have  no  element 
which  will  not  flourish  best  in  the  serene  air  of  eternity ;  con- 
found it  with  systems  and  hierarchies,  with  the  pomp  and 


S98  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

show  of  visible  ceremonious  uniformity,  and  you  overlook  its 
essence  ;  there  will  be  no  end  of  your  wandermg.  Let  Chris- 
tians awaken  to  convert  the  world ;  that  done,  all  is  done ; 
that  missed,  though  the  world  tottered  under  the  weight  of 
cathedrals,  and  the  pile  of  ghastly  uniformity  had  a  base  as 
broad  as  Sahara,  all  were  lost. 

Arnold's  view  of  the  office  and  education  of  the  theologian 
in  our  day  deserves  a  passing  glance.  It  recognized  the  value 
of  the  human  element,  as  distinguished  from  the  barely  the- 
ological, the  fatal  danger,  that  students  of  theology  become 
mere  discriminators  of  doctrinal  correctness,  mere  defenders 
of  creed  and  system,  mere  catechetic  expounders  of  the  truth, 
mere  denizens  of  the  school  or  library,  failing  to  unfold  within 
them  that  expansion  of  human  sympathy  which  is  the  means 
in  God's  hand  of  the  action  of  man  on  man.  Soundness  in 
doctrine  is  of  vital  importance ;  yet  theological  education  must 
wander  from  the  spirit  of  Christianity,  if  it  becomes  a  mere 
instruction  and  practice  in  systematic  or  exegetic  theology ;  it 
is  well  that  a  fisherman  can  keep  his  net  in  order,  perceiving 
and  rectifying  the  slightest  rent  or  weakness ;  yet  the  manner 
of  casting  the  net  is  also  of  great  moment,  and  we  appeal  to 
those  informed  in  the  matter,  whether  it  is  not  common  to  find 
young  men  armed  at  all  points  in  exegetic  and  controversial 
theology,  who  yet  fail  utterly  when  they  come  to  cast  the  Gos- 
pel net  out  into  the  world.  Christ  called  his  disciples  to  be 
fishers  of  men,  to  the  grand  practical  task  of  world-conversion ; 
when  He  sent  out  the  seventy,  His  summary  of  doctrine  was 
very  short,  while  His  detail  of  the  method  of  their  preaching 
was  much  more  extended. 

Arnold's  political  views  need  not  long  detain  us.  He  loved 
politics  extremely ;  he  considered  it  a  noble  ambition  which 
prompted  the  desire  of  ruling.     The  leading  features  of  his 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  399 

systeni  can  be  easily  defined ;  they  reflect  well  the  main  fea- 
tures of  his  mind,  Irery  realism,  and  statesmanlike  constructive- 
ness.  He  was  one  of  the  most  determined  opponents  that  con- 
servatism, in  the  various  forms  in  which  it  has  stereotyped 
itself,  ever  met.  He  deemed  it  always,  in  its  essence  erro- 
neous ;  to  halt  was  of  necessity  wrong ;  it  was  only  by  progi'ess, 
he  would  have  said,  that  what  is  good  could  be  preserved  :  pro- 
ceed as  slowly  as  is  necessary  for  sureness,  but  pause  in  the 
ocean,  and  that  moment  your  ship  begins  to  rot,  or  the  revolu- 
tionary tempest  awakens  behind,  and  then  the  acceleration  is 
fiital.  His  words  on  the  subject  are  deliberate  and  bold  : — "  As 
I  feel  that,  of  the  two  besetting  sins  of  human  nature,  selfish 
neglect  and  selfish  agitation,  the  former  is  the  more  common, 
and  has,  in  the  long  run,  done  far  more  harm  than  the  latter, 
although  the  outbreaks  of  the  latter,  while  they  last,  are  of  a 
far  more  atrocious  character ;  so  I  have  in  a  manner  vowed  to 
myself,  and  prayed  that,  with  God's  blessing,  no  excesses  of 
popular  wickedness,  though  I  should  be  myself,  as  I  expect,  the 
victim  of  them,  no  temporary  evils  produced  by  revolution, 
shall  ever  make  me  forget  the  wickedness  of  Toryism — of  that 
spirit  which  crucified  Christ  himself,  which  has,  throughout  the 
long  experience  of  all  history,  continually  thwarted  the  cause 
of  God  and  goodness,  and  has  gone  on  abusing  its  opportuni- 
ties, and  heaping  up  wrath,  by  a  long  series  of  selfish  neglect, 
against  the  day  of  wrath  and  judgment."  Again  : — "  There  is 
nothing  so  revolutionary,  because  there  is  nothing  so  unnatural 
and  so  convulsive  to  society,  as  the  strain  to  keep  things 
fixed,  when  all  the  world  is  by  the  very  law  of  its  creation  in 
eternal  progress ;  and  the  cause  of  all  the  evils  of  the  world 
may  be  traced  to  that  natural  but  most  deadly  error  of  human 
indolence  and  corruption,  that  our  business  is  to  preserve,  and 
not  to  improve."     He  challenges  a  wide  induction  : — "  Search 


400  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

and  look  whether  you  can  find  that  any  constitution  was  de- 
stroyed from  within,  by  faction  or  discontent,  without  its  de- 
struction having  been,  either  just  penally,  or  necessary,  because 
it  could  not  any  longei  answer  its  proper  purposes."  At 
times  he  breaks  forth  in  a  fine  strong  figure : — ""  '  Flectere  si 
nequeo  superos,  Acheronta  movebo,'  is  the  cry  of  Reform,  when, 
long  repulsed  and  scorned,  she  is  on  the  point  of  changing  her 
visage  to  that  of  Revolution."  From  these  characteristic  sen- 
tences, compared  with  other  parts  of  his  works,  we  learn  ac- 
curately his  position  as  a  political  thinker.  Selfishness  in  its 
two  forms  he  shunned  on  either  hand :  the  selfishness  that  will 
sit  in  icy  and  relentless  indifference  on  its  throne,  though  that 
throne  be  placed  on  a  pyramid  of  skulls ;  this  is  the  selfishness 
of  those  for  whom  it  has,  in  all  ages,  been  hard  to  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven :  and  the  selfishness  which  cries  simply, 
Give,  give ;  let  religion,  honor,  valor,  all  be  flung  aside,  let 
Throne,  Church,  Aristocracy  be  cast  into  the  fire,  that  we  may 
be  warmed  at  the  blaze ;  this  is  the  selfishness  of  anarchy  and 
atheism ;  between  the  two  he  trimmed,  in  the  golden  mean  of 
a  manly  patriotism,  a  reasonable,  unresting,  unhasting  progress, 
and  a  stooping  to  the  majesty  of  law.  The  Warburton  theory 
of  government,  as  we  have  seen,  he  rejected ;  he  recognized 
the  duties  and  responsibilities  of  nations ;  and  thus  we  trace 
his  political  system  to  its  union  with  his  Christianity  in  the  re- 
sponsible civil-religious  church-state.  The  laissez-fliire  school 
he  opposed  absolutely,  looking  with  feelings  of  profound  and 
melancholy  interest  upon  the  eighteenth  century  in  its  first  half, 
as  a  time  of  rest,  which  might  have  been  improved,  but  was 
lost  forever. 

In  1842,  we  find  Arnold  writing  thus  in  his  diary : — "  The 
day  after  t  )-morrow  is  my  birth-day,  if  I  am  permitted  to  live 
to  see  it — my  forty-seventh  birth-day  since  my  birth.     How 


THOMAS     ARNOLD.  401 

large  a  portion  of  my  life  on  earth  is  already  passed.  And 
then — what  is  to  follow  this  life  1  How  visibly  my  outward 
work  seems  contracting  and  softening  away  into  the  gentler 
emotions  of  old  age.  In  one  sense,  how  nearly  can  I  now  say, 
'  VixV  And  I  thank  God  that,  as  far  as  ambition  is  concerned, 
it  is,  I  trust,  fully  mortified ;  I  have  no  desire  other  than  to 
step  back  from  my  present  place  in  the  world,  and  not  to  rise 
to  a  higher.  Still,  there  are  works  which,  with  God's  per- 
mission, I  would  do  before  the  night  cometh ;  especially  that 
great  work,  if  I  might  be  permitted  to  take  part  in  it.  But, 
above  all,  let  me  mind  my  own  personal  work — to  keep  my- 
self pure,  and  zealous,  and  believing — ^laboring  to  do  God's 
will,  yet  not  anxious  that  it  should  be  done  by  me  rather  than 
by  others,  if  God  disapproves  of  my  doing  it." 

Christianity  has  wrought  its  work  ;  the  armor  is  girded  on, 
yet  there  is  the  willingness  to  unbrace  it,  the  noble  warrior 
valor  yearns  to  share  the  combat,  but  yet  is  embraced  and 
transfigured  in  the  nobler,  that  hides  self  altogether  in  desire 
for  the  glory  of  God.  Next  morning  he  hears  the  voice  of 
death ;  the  sun  of  that  birth-day  looked  upon  his  corpse. 

There  is  something  to  us  martially  stirring,  and  even  beau- 
tiful, in  the  death  of  Arnold.  It  is  like  that  of  a  warrior  on 
the  stricken  field ;  so  suddenly  does  it  come,  and  with  such  a 
calm  pride  does  he  meet  it.  That  brief,  decisive  inquiry  as  to 
the  nature  of  his  ailment  is  strangely  interesting ;  he  is  racked 
with  pain,  and  yet  he  is  as  pointed,  cool,  and  explicit,  as  if  he 
were  examining  a  pupil.  And  the  last  look  seen  in  his  filming 
eye  was  that  of  unutterable  kindness  ! 

At  the  time  when  Arnold  died,  he  could  be  ill  spared  to 
England.  In  the  peaceful  retirement  toward  which  he  had 
for  some  time  looked,  his  eye  might  have  taken  a  calmer,  a 
vider,  a  more  searching  look,  at  those  great  questions  with 


402  THOMAS     ARNOLD. 

which  his  life  had  made  him  so  thoroughly  conversant,  and  on 
which  the  thought  of  a  lifetime  was  well  spent ;  in  the  still  and 
rich  light  of  a  restful  evening,  he  might  have  seen  what  escaped 
his  somewhat  agitated  gaze  in  the  glare  and  bustle  of  day. 
Indications  there  were,  as  we  have  seen,  of  a  change.  It  is  not 
our  part,  however,  to  complain  ;  rather  let  us  join  in  that  noble 
expression  of  satisfied  acquiescence  in  the  plans  of  God,  which 
so  appropriately  and  sublimely  closed  his  last  writing. 


CHAPTER  IV 


THOMAS   CHALMERS. 


Thomas  Chalmers  was  born  in  one  of  those  homes  which  have 
been  the  pride  and  the  blessing  of  Scotland  :  to  which,  rather 
than  to  aught  else,  Scotland  may  point  as  her  achievement 
among  the  nations,  and  to  whose  final  uprearing  countless  influ- 
ences and  agencies  have  co-operated.  It  is  often  in  the  far 
distance  that  causes  work,  whose  effects  are  seen  in  living 
bloom  around :  the  cloud  was  gathered  from  the  remote  Atlan- 
tic, whose  drops  cause  the  farmer's  little  corn-field  to  spring ; 
the  hillock  on  whose  side  his  cottage  turns  its  bright  face 
toward  the  southern  sun  was  upheaved  by  the  might  of  central 
fire  ere  mankind  was  born.  The  fierce  struggle  in  the  dark 
wood  of  Falkirk,  the  victorious  charge  on  the  bright  plain  of 
Bannockburn,  the  wrestling  of  Luther  with  Satan  in  his  silent 
chamber  at  Erfurt,  the  far  flight  and  inevitable  gaze  of  the 
intellect  of  Calvin,  the  rugged  earnestness  of  Knox,  the  godly 
valor  of  Peden  and  Cameron,  all  conjoined  their  agencies  to 
build  up  the  quiet  homes  of  Presbyterian  Scotland.  Nor  was 
this  an  unworthy  or  insignificant  consummation :  the  almost 
reverential  admiration  with  which  all  men  have  looked  into 
the  circle  of  "  The  Cottar's  Saturday  Night"  proclaims  it  to 
have  been  noble  and  sufficient.  Of  such  homes,  substantial 
comfort  and  cheerful  piety  were  the  characteristics  ;  religious 
thoughtfulness  and  industrious  peace  dwelt  there  in  kindly 


404  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

union;  the  " auld  Ha'-Bible"  was  their  corner-stone.  Such 
homes  write  on  the  face  of  the  world  the  best  evidence  of  the 
truth  of  Christianity  !  And  the  father  of  Thomas  Chalmers 
was  the  worthy  head  of  such  a  home,  a  fine  example  of  the 
right-hearted  Calvinistic  Scotchman.  Of  deep  and  tender  feel- 
ings, yet  ever  manly  and  firm,  humble  and  reverent  toward 
God,  unobtrusive  yet  unbending  in  the  presence  of  men,  John 
Chalmers  of  Anstruther  was  that  style  of  man  which  forms 
the  life-blood  of  a  nation,  and  whose  presence  in  a  family  is 
the  satisfactory  guarantee  of  an  education  which  may,  without 
hesitation,  be  pronounced  good.  Thomas  was  his  sixth  child ; 
he  was  born  at  Anstruther  in  Fife,  in  March,  1780.  He  showed 
from  the  first  a  noble  disposition :  truthful,  joyous,  affection- 
ate ;  the  reader  can  judge  how  the  influences  of  such  a  father 
and  such  a  home  would  act  upon  him. 

In  his  childhood  we  find  little  worthy  of  remark  ;  little  more, 
probably,  than  is  to  be  told  of  all  healthy  and  clever  children. 
When  so  much  a  child  as  to  be  grossly  ill-treated  by  his  nurse, 
he  is  yet  so  much  a  man  as  to  observe  with  strict  honor  a 
promise  of  secrecy  which  she  easily  won  from  his  unsuspecting 
heart ;  he  soon  determines  to  be  a  minister,  and,  not  to  lose 
time,  chooses  his  first  text,  "  Let  brotherly  love  continue,"  a 
text,  by  the  way,  of  which  ho  would  have  approved  as  heartily 
at  sixty  as  at  six ;  one  day  he  is  caught  pacing  his  room,  and 
repeating,  in  evident  emotion,  the  words  "  Oh,  Absalom,  my 
son,  my  son."  These  are  pleasing  traits,  if  nowise  extraor- 
dinary ;  they  at  least  show  clearly  that  he  was  a  noble  child. 

At  school  he  was  almost  precisely  what  it  is  best  for  a  boy 
to  be ;  if  he  erred  at  all,  it  was  on  the  safe  side.  This  j)ortion 
of  his  training  may  be  characterized  fully  and  fitly  by  saying, 
that  the  important  education  of  the  class-room  was  carefully 
prevented  from  encroaching  on  the  perhaps  even  more  import- 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  405 

ant  education  of  llic  playgronnd.  He  was  distinguished  in 
school  by  no  remarkable  proficiency,  and  might  be  known 
among  his  class-fellows  only  by  the  greater  strength  and  buoy- 
ancy of  his  young  nature.  When  he  chose  to  learn,  he  learned 
fast ;  this  is  an  undoubted  and  important  flict.  But  it  was  in 
the  field  or  the  playground,  where  the  free  loud  laugh  of  the 
glad  young  bosom  rang  cheerily,  every  faculty  awake  to  watch 
the  turns  and  win  the  triumphs  of  the  game,  every  muscle  in 
fine  healthful  tension,  every  drop  of  blood  surging  in  exultant 
fullness  of  life,  that  an  observant  and  penetrating  eye  might 
have  discerned  the  probability  of  his  trimming  skillfully  be- 
tween metaphysical  dreaminess  and  mechanic  dullness,  and 
attaining  a  healthful,  powerful  manhood.  He  was  at  school 
rather  a  Clive  than  a  Coleridge.  His  youthful  mind  was  one 
of  marked  candor  and  purity ;  at  no  period  of  his  life  was  he 
tainted  with  aught  definitely  vicious  or  ignoble.  His  nature 
was  open,  generous,  affectionate ;  his  strength,  physical  and 
intellectual,  exuberant;  he  was  social,  truthful,  and  pure- 
minded. 

Ere  completing  his  twelfth  year,  he  entered  the  University 
of  St.  Andrews.  During  the  first  two  sessions,  he  was  still  a 
school-boy.  "  Golf,  foot-ball,  and  particularly  hand-ball,"  with 
similar  avocations,  occupied  his  time.  Any  thing  deserving  the 
name  of  classical  culture  he  never  received.  At  the  precise 
period  when  a  few  additional  years  at  school  would  probably 
have  affected  his  whole  history,  he  was  sent  to  the  university ; 
his  sympathies,  unawakened  to  the  greatness  and  the  beauty 
of  antiquity,  were  soon  arrested  by  mathematics. 

It  w^as  in  his  fourteenth  year  that  his  mind  awoke  to  its  full 
intellectual  vigor.  He  then  commenced  his  third  session  at 
the  university,  and  entered  upon  the  study  of  mathematics. 
The  pursuit  was  eminently  congenial,  and  he  at  once  became 


406  THOMAS     CHALdERS. 

distinguished.  The  teacher  of  the  mathematical  classes  in  St. 
Andrews  at  this  time  was  Dr.  James  Brown,  and  Chalmers 
was  much  in  his  society.  It  was  the  period  of  the  French 
Revolution,  and  Dr.  Brown  participated  largely  in  the  excite- 
ment of  the  time.  He  was  of  the  school  of  radical  reform  in 
politics,  and  no  doubt  of  extremely  liberal  sentiments  on  relig- 
ious matters.  As  was  to  be  expected,  Chalmers  embraced 
the  opinions  of  his  instructor.  He  read  Godwin's  Political 
Justice  with  delight  and  approval ;  he  gazed  on  that  vast,  elab- 
orate, and  surely  imposing  structure,  with  its  ice-pinnacles, 
clear,  sharply  defined,  glittering  in  the  wintery  air,  and  deemed 
it  a  palace  in  whose  many  chambers  the  human  race  might  at 
length  find  rest ;  he  breathed  for  a  time  the  thin  atmosphere 
of  its  chill  virtue  and  clockwork  justice,  and  thought  it  were 
well  always  to  be  there.  The  ideas  which  he  had  brought 
from  his  father's  house  fell  away  from  him  ;  for  the  homespun 
but  substantial  garb  of  Scotch  Calvinism,  he  substituted  one 
of  modern  make,  jaunty  and  of  bright  color,  but  spun  mainly 
of  vapor  and  moonshine.  The  thorough  depravity  of  man,  an 
atonement  by  the  death  of  Christ,  salvation  by  faith  alone, 
were  left  to  the  weak  and  narrow-minded.  What  seemed  a 
wider  and  more  brilliant  prospect  opened  to  the  eye  of  the  as- 
piring student.  Scaling  the  sunny  heights  of  college  promo- 
tion, loving  truth  and  proclaiming  virtue,  winning  the  crowns 
of  fame,  expatiating  in  the  sky-fields  of  thought  and  imagina- 
tion, basking  in  the  smile  of  the  Universal  Benevolence,  he 
v^ould  go  on  in  his  strength  and  prosper.  This  we  consider 
jhe  first  epoch  in  the  intellectual  history  of  Chalmers. 

In  1795,  he  entered  the  Divinity  Hall,  formally  to  com- 
mence the  study  of  theology.  His  mind,  however,  was  yet 
under  the  spell  of  geometry.  He  had  forced  his  way  to  the 
French  mathematical  literature,  and  was  diligently  occupied 


THOMAS     CnALMERS.  40*7 

in  that  opulent  field.  Toward  the  close,  however,  of  his  first 
theological  session,  a  more  important  intellectual  influence 
than  that  of  mathematics  was  brought  to  bear  upon  his  mind. 
He  became  acquainted  with  the  Inquiry  of  Jonathan  Edwards. 
Its  study  was  to  him  an  exercise  of  rapturous  delight;  his 
mind  was  filled  with  it  till  it  seemed  about  to  "lose  its 
balance."  It  was  the  second  determining  influence  in  his  men- 
tal development ;  mathematics  and  radicalism  were  the  first. 
We  must  malve  one  or  two  observations  on  its  nature,  and  on 
what  it  reveals. 

The  simple  fiict  that,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  it  was  to  him  not 
a  task,  but  a  positive  and  intense  pleasure,  to  follow  the  dry 
light  of  the  great  American  metaphysician  into  those  remote 
and  difficult  regions  of  thought,  is  a  proof  of  extraordinary  in- 
tellectual endowment.  At  an  age  when  his  sympathies  might 
have  been  expected  to  find  comfort  and  response  in  the  circu- 
lating library,  and  his  intellect  a  pleasurable  occupation  in  the 
lighter  walks  of  history  or  science,  he  found  his  whole  spiritual 
nature  freely  and  delightfully  exercised  by  the  treatise  on  the 
freedom  of  the  will.  And  the  eff*ect  it  produced  on  his  boyish 
mind  is  remarkable.  With  the  exception  of  Swift's  icy  mis- 
anthropy, we  can  remember  no  phenomenon  in  literature  com- 
parable to  the  unimpassioned  coldness  of  the  mind  of  Edwards 
in  the  investigation  of  those  high  and  awful  themes  which  are 
directly  or  hidircctly  the  subject  of  his  Inquiry.  We  conceive 
his  argument,  when  well  understood  in  its  limits  and  condi- 
tions, to  be  irrefragable  ;  yet  it  is  more  than  can  be  demanded 
of  the  human  mind  to  disrobe  itself  so  entirely  of  human  sym- 
pathy as  the  mind  of  Jonathan  Edwards  appears  to  disrobe 
itself  as  we  read  that  treatise.  We  assert  not  that  its  author 
was  a  man  devoid  of  kindness  of  heart,  but,  in  his  work  on  the 
freedom  of  the  will,  he  seems  to  us  to  resolve  himself  abso- 


408  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

lutely  into  a  thinking  apparatus.  He  deliberately  looks  into 
hell,  and  the  whole  heat  of  its  burnings  can  not  melt  into  a 
tear  the  ice  in  his  eye ;  he  gazes  on  a  great  portion  of  his 
brother  men  stretched  to  eternity  upon  a  wheel,  and  his  eyelid 
quivers  no  more  than  if  he  saw  a  butterfly. 

Now  we  desire  to  note,  that,  despite  the  tremendous  im- 
pression produced  on  the  mind  of  Chalmers  by  the  Inquiry 
into  the  freedom  of  the  will,  the  effect  was  not  to  darken  but 
to  brighten,  not  to  depress  but  to  elevate.  It  produced  "a 
twelvemonth  of  elysium  ;"  these  are  his  own  words.  His  in- 
tellect w^as  not  beaten  hard,  and  rendered  dead  to  all  other  im- 
pulses— a  common  case  with  young  men  whom  the  genius  of 
some  writer  overpowers.  He  did  not,  with  a  trembling, 
gloomy,  irresistible  curiosity,  pry  and  pry  into  the  world  of 
mystery  here  opened  up  to  him,  as  young  Foster  would  have 
done.  He  accepted  the  truth  he  found ;  he  saw  the  whole 
universe  in  God.  But  when  he  went  with  Edwards  to  the 
mouth  of  hell,  he  still  heard  the  melodies  of  heaven.  He  saw 
that  Infinite  Power  clasped  the  world,  but  he  could  feel  that 
Infinite  Wisdom  guided  the  infinite  might,  and  be  content. 
His  mind  expanded  and  brightened.  He  might  have  been 
seen  at  early  morn  in  the  dewy  fields,  whither  he  went  to 
wander  alone,  and  to  expatiate  in  the  vast  conception  :  to  feel 
the  world  but  a  little  station  on  which  to  stand  and  see  him- 
self overarched  by  the  infinitude  of  God  as  by  the  illimitable 
azure  above  his  head  ;  to  lift  up  his  eyes  and  catch  a  glimpse 
of  the  golden  chains  by  which  the  universe  hung  round  the 
throne  of  God.  Looking  upon  him  in  those  hours,  it  seems 
scarce  possible  not  to  be  reminded  of  that  striking  passage  in 
modern  poetry,  in  which  the  great  poet  of  nature  and  medita- 
tion, whose  conception  of  certain  great  influences  which  aid  in 
molding  lofty  and  thoughtful  character  was  perhaps  stronger 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  409 

than  that  of  any  other,  has  pictured  the  corresponding  stage 
of  mental  history  in  the  case  of  his  own  hero. 

"The  growing  youth, 
"What  soul  was  his,  when,  from  the  naked  top 
Of  some  bold  headland,  he  beheld  the  sun 
Rise  up  and  bathe  the  world  in  light !     He  look'd — 
Ocean  and  earth,  the  solid  frame  of  earth 
And  ocean's  liquid  mass,  in  gladness  lay 
Beneath  him: — Far  and  wide  the  clouds  were  touch'd, 
And  in  their  silent  faces  could  he  read 
Unutterable  love.     Sound  needed  none, 
Nor  any  voice  of  joy  ;  his  spirit  drank 
The  spectacle ;  sensation,  soul,  and  form, 
_^A11  melted  into  him ;  they  swallow'd  up 
His  animal  being  ;  in  them  did  he  live. 
And  by  them  did  he  live ;  they  were  his  life. 
In  such  access  of  mind,  in  such  high  hour 
Of  visitation  from  the  living  God, 
Thought  was  not ;  in  enjoyment  it  expired. 
IS'o  thanks  he  breathed,  he  proffer'd  no  request ; 
Rapt  into  still  communion  that  transcends 
The  imperfect  offices  of  prayer  and  praise. 
His  mind  was  a  thanksgiving  to  the  Power 
That  made  him ;  it  was  blessedness  and  love." 

We  do  not  find  that  Chalmers  was  at  all  smitten  by  fear ; 
the  passionless  demonstration  of  Edwards,  of  all  modes  of  rep- 
resentation perhaps  the  best  calculated  to  impress  his  mind 
with  terror,  cast  over  it  no  thick  abiding  gloom ;  he  expe- 
rienced the  sublime  emotion  of  reverential  awe,  but  he  knew 
nothing  of  slavish  fear.  His  mind  was  of  that  radically  sound 
and  noble  order  which  responds  to  influences  of  hope  and  love 
rather  than  of  fear  and  constraint ;  he  had  an  affinity  with 
light. 

18 


410  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

He  had  not  yet,  however,  completed  the  stages  of  what  was 
strictly  his  education.  He  had  to  pass  through  a  more  painful 
ordeal  than  he  had  hitherto  known.  In  1798,  he  entered  the 
family  of  a  gentleman  as  private  tutor.  Nothing  of  moment 
occurred  during  his  residence  there.  It  was,  indeed,  a  fine  re- 
ply which  he  gave  when  taunted  by  his  employer  with  pride, 
one  worthy  of  a  self-respecting  and  high-minded  youth :  "  There 
are,"  he  said,  "  two  kinds  of  pride,  sir :  there  is  that  pride 
which  lords  it  over  inferiors,  and  there  is  that  pride  which  re- 
joices in  repressing  the  insolence  of  superiors.  The  first  I 
have  none  of;  the  second  I  glory  in ;"  yet  we  attach  little  im- 
portance to  the  probably  accidental  squabbles  in  which  he  be- 
came involved.  But  about  the  period  of  his  quitting  this  resi- 
dence and  returning  to  St.  Andrews  to  complete  his  theological 
studies,  when  he  was  just  entering  on  his  twentieth  year,  he  fell 
in  with  D'Holbach's  once  celebrated  Systeme  de  la  Nature. 
The  agitations  of  his  tutorship  had,  it  may  be,  somewhat  un- 
settled and  fevered  his  mind,  rendering  it  more  open  to  assault, 
disturbing  that  calm  concentration  of  power  by  which  error  is 
best  met  and  repelled.  The  pompous,  far-sounding  rhetoric 
of  the  book  charmed  his  ear ;  the  magnitude  and  apparent 
stability  of  its  scientific  scaffolding  caught  his  eye ;  its  tone  of 
calm  assumption,  as  if  it  were  the  conclusive  utterance  of  ulti- 
mate truth,  perplexed  and  confounded  him.  It  was  not  the 
flippant  audacity  of  youth ;  it  preached  virtue  of  the  most 
high-flown  order ;  it  could  not  be  the  birth  of  ignorance,  for  it 
was  reared  upon  the  foundation  of  modern  science.  It  j^lanted 
its  scientific  engines  on  the  earth,  and  with  an  air  of  perfect 
strength  and  philosophic  deliberation  turned  them  against  prin- 
cipalities and  powers.  First,  it  swept  from  earth's  horizon  all 
religions,  the  Christian  among  the  rest ;  these  it  flung  into  one 
grave,  and  wrote  over  it — Superstition ;  then  it  cast  a  thick 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  411 

impenetrable  smoke,  as  from  the  depths  of  hell,  over  all  the 
heaven,  blotthig  out  those  fields  of  immortality,  toward  which 
the  eye  of  humanity,  through  its  weary  pilgrimage,  has  ever 
gazed  with  wistful  hope ;  these  it  called  the  phantom  pictures 
of  enthusiasm  and  imagination ;  last  of  all,  it  aimed  its  bolts 
at  the  throne  of  the  universe,  to  dethrone  Him  that  sat  there. 
Tlic  ultimate  achievement  of  science  was  to  seat  itself  in  the 
throne  of  God.  And  how  beneficent  was  its  reign  to  be !  The 
green  earth  was  to  bask  in  the  universal  sunshine,  impeded  by 
no  darkening  cloud ;  the  fair  field  was  no  longer  to  be  trodden 
by  the  hoof  of  the  war-steed,  the  harvests  of  earth  were  no 
longer  to  be  fatted  with  human  gore ;  the  world  was  to  become 
one  vast  dancing  saloon,  where  men  abode  for  a  time,  and 
from  which,  on  any  occasion  of  inconvenience,  suicide,  the  no- 
ble right  and  privilege  of  the  free,  was  ready  to  dismiss  them ; 
all  Ethiopians  were  to  be  washed  white,  or,  at  least,  white- 
washed ;  the  infancy  and  boyhood  of  humanity  had  passed,  and 
now  the  noonday  of  its  youth  had  come.  These  things  were 
to  be  done  by  the  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  world ;  such 
laws  were  all  physical ;  ideas  could  be  mechanically  accounted 
for ;  "  our  soul  has  occasion  for  ideas  the  same  as  our  stomach 
has  occasion  for  aliments."  The  proud  philosopher  required 
but  one  word  to  account  for  the  universe — physical  law.  Such 
was  the  teaching  of  the  System  of  Nature. 

The  mind  of  Chalmers  w\as  of  a  decidedly  scientific  cast ;  he 
had  been  long  accustomed  to  the  bare  and  precise  reasoning  of 
nathematics ;  he  delighted  in  a  definite,  comprehensible,  tangi- 
ole  proof.  Here,  then,  was  DTIolbach,  pointing  out  his  laws, 
measuring,  with  consummate  assurance,  heaven  and  earth, 
plausibly,  nay,  powerfully,  exhibiting  the  evils  of  superstition, 
and  making  them  synonymous  with  the  evils  of  religion,  talk- 
ing in  the  loftiest  strain  of  universal  benevolence  and  felicity, 


412 


THOMAS     CHALMERS. 


and  concluding  with  a  fine  rhetorical  panegyric  on  virtue.  To 
the  baron  it  was  sun-clear  that  a  divine  power  in  the  universe 
was  superfluous ;  these  were  the  laws,  why  go  beyond  them  1 
And  if  such  was  superfluous,  it  was  but  the  next  step  to  pro- 
nounce its  belief  noxious.  Chalmers  was  staggered.  It  seemed, 
for  a  time,  as  if  that  Eye  which  Edwards  had  shown  him  light- 
ing the  universe  was  to  go  out.  He  was  in  deep  anguish  and 
perplexity ;  his  friends  feared  for  his  reason.  But  his  mind 
was  too  fair,  too  noble,  and  too  substantially  grounded,  to 
lapse  into  skepticism.  He  had  heard  one  side  of  the  question ; 
he  honestly  turned  to  hear  the  other.  The  result  was,  that 
he  was  firmly  and  forever  established  in  the  belief  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

The  various  steps  in  this  gradual  consummation  we  are  un- 
able to  trace :  but  we  know  the  general  means  by  which  he  at- 
tained it.  It  was  by  a  fair  study  of  the  great  apologists  of  the 
last  century — Beattie,  Paley,  and  Butler.  The  first  of  these  it 
was  who  steadied  him  after  the  maddening  draught  of  material- 
ism :  the  precise  date  of  his  perusal  of  Paley  we  can  not  fix ; 
his  final  declaration,  uttered  long  afterward,  was,  "  Butler  made 
me  a  Christian."  The  outline  of  his  progress  may,  we  think, 
be  traced.  He  soon  saw  that,  with  all  its  pretense,  and  para- 
phernalia, the  system  of  D'Holbach  was  a  mere  film  on  the 
surface  of  things ;  the  arguments  of  Beattie  certified  him  of 
the  reliability  of  man's  inner  beliefs ;  and  Butler's  giant  intel- 
lect gave  him  a  glance  into  the  real  structure  of  the  universe. 
He  came  to  the  unalterable  conviction  that  there  was  a  God. 
This  we  take  to  have  been  his  first  stage.  He  then  looked 
calmly  at  the  historical  evidence  of  the  fact,  that  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth did  perform  works  competent  only  to  almighty  power 
on  the  plains  of  Judea ;  the  clear  and  masterly  logic  of  Paley 
satisfied  him  of  this.    The  other  steps  naturally  followed.    The 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  413 

result  was  a  deliberate  conviction  that  it  was  a  fact  dubitable 
by  no  fair  and  capable  intellect,  that  the  Christian  religion  was 
positively  revealed  to  man  by  the  living  God. 

We  have  two  remarks  to  make  here. 

The  first  is,  That  this  method  of  proof  embraces  substantial 
evidence  for  the  truth  of  Christianity.  There  are  minds  which 
are  incapable  of  doubting  the  existence  of  God :  born  with 
such  an  ingrained  conviction  that  man  was  created  for  an  end, 
that  the  universe  is  not  a  mad  flickering  phantasmagoria,  de- 
void of  purpose,  and  meaning  blank  nothing,  as  to  be  unable 
to  compass  the  conception  of  the  non-existence  of  the  Supreme 
Mind.  We  deem  this  the  form  of  intellect  which  is  of  all 
others  the  most  substantial  and  healthful.  And  we  are  inclined 
to  think  that  the  mind  of  Chalmers  was  radically  of  this  type ; 
the  temporary  delirium  produced  by  D'Holbach  would  proba- 
bly have  departed  even  without  positive  opposing  argument, 
when  his  mind  regained  the  power  of  calm  thought.  But,  if 
this  central  fact  is  doubted,  it  must,  first  of  all,  be  placed  on 
an  impregnable  basis  :  and  how  can  it  be  so,  save  by  exhibit- 
ing the  reasonableness  of  an  acceptation  of  the  ineradicable 
beliefs  of  humanity,  of  a  trust  in  "  the  mighty  hopes  which 
make  us  men  ?"  It  being  placed  beyond  doubt  that  God  ex- 
ists, and  that  the  world  has  been  established  by  Him,  we  see 
not  how  the  mind  is  to  advance  to  a  more  precise  idea  of  His 
general  government  and  our  relation  to  Him,  except  by  earnest 
contemplation  of  that  small  portion  of  His  ways  which  we  do 
know — in  other  words,  by  a  consideration  of  the  analogies  of 
Butler.  The  ground  thus  cleared,  the  want  and  the  reasonable- 
ness of  Christianity  demonstrated,  the  time  has  come  to  con- 
sider the  actual  historical  evidence  for  its  truth,  considered  as 
a  strictly  objective  revelation ;  and  we  know  not  whither  to 
point  the  inquirer  for  this  rather  than  to  the  clear,  impartial, 


414  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

comprehensive  summary  by  Paley  of  the  testimony  to  the  fact 
that  Christ  raised  Lazarus,  and  rose  Himself  from  the  grave. 
If  he  believes  that  the  mission  of  Jesus  was  divine,  that  His 
"  living  Father"  sent  Him,  the  whole  system  of  revelation  of 
which  He  is  the  corner-stone  is  seen  to  stand  on  an  impregnable 
basis ;  all  that  was  delivered  before  the  Christian  era  resting 
on  His  authority,  all  that  has  been  delivered  since  secured  bj 
His  promise.  In  the  individual  case,  there  may  be  a  mode  ot 
arriving  at  the  conviction  of  the  divine  truth  of  the  Scriptures 
iifferent  from  all  this ;  these  Scriptures  may  be  in  such  man- 
ner applied  to  the  soul  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  that  their  divine 
origin  can  not  be  doubted ;  and  it  is  equally  true,  that  the  pro- 
found accordance  with  the  general  order  of  things  here  on  earth 
exhibited  by  these  writings,  the  answers  they  embody  to  man's 
questionings,  the  supply  they  offer  to  man's  wants,  may  be  so 
explored  and  comprehended,  that  the  result  must  be  an  assur- 
ance, that  the  whole  phenomenon  is  utterly  beyond  explanation, 
save  on  the  hypothesis  that  the  ordinary  dealings  of  Providence 
had  in  one  case  been  diverged  from,  and  the  natural  powers  of 
man  in  one  instance  divinely  supplemented.  Yet,  when  the 
question  is  a  simple  question  of  fact ;  when  a  man  desires  not, 
in  the  first  instance,  to  enter  the  edifice  of  Christianity,  but  to 
learn  whether  the  pillars  of  it  were  laid  by  God,  in  the  same 
positive,  independent,  objective  way,  in  which  He  created  the 
world,  we  must  consider  the  plain  logical  vindication  of  the 
historical  fact,  that  a  superhuman  power  accompanied  the  words 
of  Jesus,  a  substantial  form  of  Christian  evidence. 

For  it  must  be  distinctly  avowed  on  the  one  hand,  and  kept 
in  view  on  the  other,  that  the  province  of  the  Christian  apolo- 
gist is  limited.  There  is  one  sphere  which  he  can  never  enter : 
the  sphere  of  the  operations  of  the  Divine  Spirit.  He  may 
show  the  toons' stence  of  Christianity,  viewed  as  an  external 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  415 

fact,  with  the  laws  of  evidence  ;  but  he  can  not  open  the  eyes 
of  "the  world"  to  sec  that  Spirit  whom  the  Saviour  declared 
its  inability  to  see,  he  can  not  enable  the  natural  man  to  dis- 
cern the  things  which  are  "  spiritually  discerned."  We  are  far 
from  asserting  that  the  work  of  Christian  apology  has  been 
exhausted ;  but,  when  it  has  been,  it  will  by  possibility  have 
achieved  but  two  things  :  the  proof  of  Christianity  as  a  relig- 
ion once  supernaturally  given,  and  the  proof  of  Christianity  as 
a  religion  in  all  ages  divinely  sustained.  The  work  still  re- 
maining to  be  done  in  Christian  apologetics  is  embraced  in  the 
second.  That  work  Paley  and  his  school  did  not  certainly, 
save  perhaps  in  a  scarce  perceptible  degree,  attempt ;  but  they 
did  attempt,  and  with  a  success  which  can  hardly  be  called  in 
question,  the  former  portion  of  Christian  apologetics.  They 
answered  the  question  which  men  will  naturally  and  fairly  in 
the  first  instance  put  to  the  Christian — How  do  you  know  that 
your  Master  spoke  in  Judea,  and  spoke  with  supernatural 
authority  1  And  a  satisfactory  answer  to  this  question  must 
always  embrace  a  proof  of  Christianity  sufficient  to  content  the 
sober  mind,  and  to  condemn  the  gainsayer. 

Our  second  remark  is  but  a  particular  application  of  our 
first.  It  is,  that  in  the  present  day  there  exists  a  disposition 
unduly  to  depreciate  the  apologists  of  last  century.  Against 
Paley  in  particular  a  very  strong  prejudice  has  begun  to  gain 
ground — a  prejudice  of  perhaps  slight  importance  in  itself,  and 
by  no  means  absolutely  without  foundation  in  reference  to 
Paley  individually — but  of  decidedly  injurious  tendency  in 
throwing  discredit  on  the  substantial  service  rendered  by  him 
to  the  Christian  cause.  Ilis  character,  we  think,  is  not  difficult 
to  define.  It  was  not  of  the  noblest  type :  but  we  have  no 
hesitation  in  declaring  it  still  further  removed  from  one  radi- 
cally ignoble.    His  mind  was  antithetically  opposed  to  all  that 


416  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

holds  of  poetry  ;  emotional  energy  of  every  sort  was  alien  to 
his  mental  atmosphere  ;  his  temperament  was  a  miiform  mean, 
an  untroubled  calm,  removed  at  once  from  the  glory  and  the 
gloom  of  storm.  His  intellect  bore  such  relation  to  a  mind 
like  Paul's  as  a  creed  bears  to  a  Prophecy  of  Isaiah — as  the 
cold  steel  of  a  Roman  legionary  to  the  flaming  sword  of  an 
angel.  Joy  to  the  measure  of  rapture,  sorrow  to  the  measure 
of  despair,  he  could  not  feel ;  the  devotion  of  the  martyr  and 
the  raving  of  the  fanatic  were  alike  removed  from  the  balanced 
moderation  of  his  mood ;  the  mighty  passions  which  surge  in 
the  revolution  or  crash  on  the  battle-field  found  no  answering 
sympathy  in  his  breast.  And  we  perfectly  agree  with  Foster, 
in  thinking  that  this  "  order  of  mind  is  ill  fitted  to  embody  the 
highest  grandeur  of  the  Christian  character,  that  the  natural 
incapability  of  great  emotions  operates  very  strongly  to  pre- 
vent the  prevalence  of  the  Christian  spirit."  Yet  it  is  just  as 
plain  to  us,  on  the  other  hand,  that  Paley  was  radically  an 
honest,  able,  worthy  man.  Of  rough  Yorkshire  kindred,  and 
humorous,  homely  ways,  he  was  precisely  of  the  stuff  from 
which  nature  makes  the  substantial,  deliberate,  steady,  saga- 
cious Englishman ;  there  was  a  certain  sarcastic,  though  kindly 
ruggedness  and  plainness  in  his  speech,  pointedly  opposed  to 
insincerity  or  meanness ;  a  warm  homely  man,  whom  those 
who  knew  him  loved,  one  totally  devoid  of  affectation  and 
pretense,  with  little  ambition,  and  no  greed.  And  his  intel- 
lectual light,  if  very  dry,  was  very  powerful ;  the  error  was 
subtle  it  could  not  pierce,  the  truth  was  sure  which  stood  its 
scrutiny.  To  discern  with  conclusive  certainty  the  vital  points 
of  a  question ;  to  draw  them  out  in  clear  logical  sequence ; 
and  to  estimate  their  real  and  available  value,  few  minds  have 
had  more  power  than  Paley's.  His  style  wants  all  poetic 
adornment  and  emotional  fire  ;  yet  it  has  a  certain  conclusive 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  417 

satisfying  tone,  and  its  perfect  clearness  lends  it  no  mean 
charm ;  it  makes  us  feel  that  it  is  not  all  base  metal  which 
does  not  glitter.  We  should  have  no  feeling  of  uneasiness  in 
maintaining  that  his  mind,  though  wanting  certain  affinities 
with  minds  of  the  highest  order  which  Johnson's  did  possess, 
was  essentially  more  substantial  and  powerful  than  that  which 
produced  Rasselas.  If  you  look  well,  moreover,  you  will  find 
the  moral  system  of  each  nearly  similar ;  the  high  and  serene 
region  of  Christian  holiness,  as  distinguished  from  virtue, 
neither  can  be  said  to  have  entered.  We  shall  not  object  to 
Johnson's  being  entitled  a  hero ;  but  if  his  theory  of  virtue 
radically  resolved  itself  into  prudence,  as  Mr.  Carlyle  grants, 
we  shall  at  least  consider  Mr.  Kingsley  in  an  untenable  and 
absurd  position,  when  he  represents  Paley's  character  as  an 
imanswerable  argument  against  his  reasonings.  But,  indeed, 
the  absurdity  into  which  Mr.  Kingsley,  in  the  person  of  his 
hero  Alton  Locke,  has  suffered  himself  to  fall,  is  complicated 
and  glaring.  To  effect  that  confutation  which  the  precise  na- 
ture of  the  infidelity  of  last  century  required,  an  intellect  such 
as  Paley's  was  positively  demanded.  The  faintest  gleam  of 
enthusiasm,  the  slightest  warmth  of  passion,  had  neutralized 
its  effect.  It  was  the  cool,  "  philosophic,"  enlightened  intellect 
which  found  Christianity  unsatisfactory ;  it  was  the  cold  sharp 
edge  of  the  scalpel  of  modern  science  which  was  declared  to 
have  exposed  its  unsoundness;  unstable  and  excited  minds, 
natures  enthusiastic  and  fanciful,  mJght  be  allured  by  this  im- 
posing fable,  but  if  you  divested  yourself  of  all  prejudice  and 
all  passion,  and  turned  on  the  Bible  the  same  clear  impartial 
light  which  you  brought  to  the  study  of  Euclid,  it  was  not  a 
matter  of  doubt  that  rejection  of  every  notion  of  its  inspiration 
would  result.  To  meet  such  men,  to  dissipate  such  ideas, 
Paley  was  the  very  man,  "  Not  so  fast,"  he  said,  "  I'm  York 
18* 


418  THOMAS     CHALMERS 

shire  too  look  at  this  phenomenon  just  as  you  look  at  any 
other  in  aature  or  history  ;  look  at  it  on  all  sides,  with  pierc- 
ing scrutiny,  but  with  fairness  and  without  haste ;  and  then, 
whether  convinced  or  not,  declare  honestly  if  it  does  not,  at 
least,  require  a  tremendous  effort  to  consider  it  the  fruit  of 
imposture  or  frenzy  1"  Since  the  days  of  Paley,  infidelity  has 
changed  its  tone ;  the  old  jargon  about  priestcraft,  imposture, 
and  fanaticism,  has  well-nigh  died  away ;  there  is  a  caution 
now  in  assailing  fairly  and  in  front  the  facts  of  Christianity  : 
and  for  this  change  there  can  be  no  doubt  we  are  largely  in- 
debted to  him.  Mr.  Kingsley  is  a  man  of  rich  emotions  and 
unquestioned  earnestness ;  but  his  intellectual  force  is  puny  to 
that  of  Paley  ;  and  it  is  not  with  the  best  grace  that  a  clergy- 
man of  the  Church  of  England  puts  into  the  mouth  of  a  skeptic 
a  vague  and  irrelevant  charge  against  the  character  of  him  who 
wrote  the  Horee  Paulina.  The  temperament  of  John  Foster 
differed  as  essentially  from  that  of  Paley  as  Mr.  Kingsley's, 
yet  his  verdict  on  Paley's  achievement  as  a  defender  of  Chris- 
tianity was  as  follows : — "  It  has  been  the  enviable  lot  of  here 
and  there  a  favored  individual,  to  do  some  one  important 
thing  so  well,  that  it  shall  never  need  to  be  done  again  :  and 
we  regard  Dr.  Paley's  writings  on  the  Evidences  of  Chris- 
tianity as  of  so  signally  decisive  a  character,  that  we  should 
be  content  to  let  them  stand  as  the  essence  and  the  close  of  the 
great  argument  on  the  part  of  its  believers ;  and  should  feel 
no  despondency  or  chagrin,  if  we  could  be  prophetically  certi. 
fied  that  such  an  efficient  Christian  reasoner  would  never 
henceforward  arise.  We  should  consider  the  grand  fortress 
of  proof,  as  now  raised  and  finished,  the  intellectual  capital  of 
that  empire  which  is  destined  to  leave  the  widest  boundaries 
attained  by  the  Roman  far  behind."  We  think  that  this  re- 
quires qualification  and  circumscription,  but  it  is  a  very  im- 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  419 

portant  testimony,  and  may  ultimately  be  found  to  be  sub- 
stantially correct. 

We  have  seen  that  Chalmers  passed  through  an  ordeal  of 
doubt;  and  such  doubt  as  was  peculiarly  insnaring  to  his 
mathematical  intellect  and  strong  scientific  tastes.  That  Har- 
mattan  wind,  in  which  it  is  said  no  soul  of  man  can  now  live, 
had  passed  over  him,  with  its  doleful  music  and  its  burning 
sand  ;  but  on  the  homeward  side  of  the  desert  his  joints  were 
not  loosed,  his  nerves  were  not  unstrung,  his  frame  had  been 
too  firmly  knit  to  be  relaxed,  he  sprang  forward  as  if  he  had 
never  drooped.  And,  on  any  theory  of  character,  this  is  the 
grand  proof  of  the  vital  force  and  natural  vigor  of  a  man. 
Doubt  is  the  foe  by  vanquishing  which  the  young  knight  of 
truth  wins  his  spurs.  Doubt  is  the  lion  guarding  the  palace 
of  truth,  which  must  be  looked  at,  and  dared,  and  controlled 
by  the  dauntless  eye,  but  in  passing  beyond  which  alone  are  to 
be  won  the  conquests  of  manhood.  It  had  no  power  to  petrify 
or  paralyze  Chalmers ;  he  inherited  the  instinctive  knowledge 
that  between  the  true,  however  difficult  its  proofs  may  be  to 
exhibit,  and  the  plausible,  however  difficult  its  disguise  may 
be  to  pierce,  the  distance  and  difference  are  simply  infinite. 
It  was  a  moral  impossibility  for  him  to  have  been  a  skeptic ; 
he  would  have  forced  his  way  to  conscientious  and  hearty 
action,  or  sunk  into  madness  or  the  grave  ;  doubt  was  to  him 
agony,  he  felt  it  to  be  the  negation  of  all  work,  the  death  of 
action  if  it  was  not  its  birth,  and  he  struggled  toward  truth 
is  a  giant  might  struggle  through  flames  to  his  dearest 
treasure. 

In  his  twentieth  year  he  was  licensed  to  preach  the  Gospel. 

For  the  functions  of  the  high  calling  to  which  he  aspired,  he 
felt,  no  enthusiastic  predilection.  His  thirst  for  knowledge 
was  by  no  means  satisfied,  and  the  decided  bent  of  his  ambi- 


420  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

tion  was  still  toward  academic  preferment.  Instead  of 
seeking  work  in  his  profession,  he  proceeded  to  Edinburgh, 
and  studied  at  the  university  there  during  two  sessions.  Met- 
aphysical and  mathematical  subjects  mainly  engrossed  his 
attention ;  but  we  can  not  doubt  that  his  reading  was  wide 
and  varied.  It  is  generally  said  that  he  was  a  man  of  meager 
knowledge,  that  he  could  lay  no  claim  to  the  title — learned 
There  is  truth  in  the  assertion,  but  it  is  apt  to  render  us  obliv 
ious  to  another  truth  of  no  slight  importance,  by  which  it  is 
to  be  qualified  and  supplemented.  What  is  generally  and 
technically  understood  by  learning,  he  certainly  did  not  pos- 
sess. But  with  the  great  questions  of  his  day,  and  the  general 
questions  which,  at  all  times,  naturally  agitate  the  human 
mind,  he  was  abundantly  acquainted ;  and  the  impetuous  force 
of  his  own  genius  was  sufficient  to  overpower  and  render 
invisible  even  what  knowledge  of  books  he  did  possess.  His 
native  strength  refused  to  be  trammeled  by  the  thoughts  of 
other  men ;  he  so  completely  fused  in  the  fire  of  his  own  intel- 
lect what  he  obtained  from  others,  every  ingot  was  so  per- 
fectly melted,  that  it  became  impossible  to  recognize  it  in  that 
molten  torrent.  And  of  the  pedantry  of  learning  he  was  per- 
fectly, we  venture  to  say,  felicitously,  void.  If  he  found  good 
wheat  lying  around  him,  he  deemed  it  to  the  full  as  valuable 
and  fit  for  use  as  if  it  had  lain  three  thousand  years  in  the 
bram  of  a  mummy ;  if  common  sense  and  plain  evidence  set 
their  stamp  on  a  fact  or  argument,  he  did  not  care  to  affix  to 
it  the  seal  of  antiquity.  We  saw  him  deeply  influenced  by 
the  literature  and  ideas  of  the  French  Revolution ;  we  found 
him  rejoicing  in  the  sublime  abstractions  of  Edwards ;  we 
found  him  plunged  in  the  surges  of  doubt  by  D'Holbach,  and 
rescued  by  the  strong  arms  of  the  great  apologists  of  his  own 
or  the  preceding  age.     And  now,  for  two  years,  during  which 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  421 

he  engaged  very  sparingly  in  ministerial  work,  he  led  the  life 
of  a  student ;  a  life  which,  in  his  case,  could  not  be  idle.  We 
must  not  forget,  besides,  that  he  had  mastered  French,  and 
carried  his  studies  into  the  rich  mathematical  literature  of 
that  language ;  his  scientific  acquirements,  lastly,  were  becom- 
ing more  and  more  extensive  and  profound.  If  not  learned, 
he  was  certainly  a  man  of  very  great  information. 

We  are  compelled  now  to  pass  lightly  over  what  is  yet  one 
of  the  most  interesting  and  characteristic  portions  of  the  his- 
tory of  Chalmers ;  that,  namely,  which  embraces  the  first  few 
years  of  his  incumbency  in  Kilmany,  and  during  which,  amid 
scorn  and  conflict,  he  taught  mathematics  and  chemistry  in  St. 
Andrews. 

Looking  over  the  whole  period,  we  can  not  but  think  that, 
with  all  its  eccentricity,  and  with  even  a  certain  degree  of  dis- 
pleasing extravagance,  there  is  in  it  much  to  admire.  So 
great  and  healthful  is  the  young  strength,  that  it  must,  with 
all  its  exuberance,  attract  the  sympathies  of  the  healthful  and 
strong.  A  surging,  insatiable  energy  characterizes  the  time. 
It  seems  a  pleasure  to  him  to  find  hills  in  his  way,  for  the 
mere  opportunity  of  grasping  and  hurling  them  aside ;  his 
toil  and  his  enjoyment  rise  together ;  he  is  a  perfervid  Scot,  a 
lion  I'amjjant:  mathematical  studies,  chemical  studies,  consider- 
able metaphysical  studies,  parochial  duties,  miiversity  struggles, 
book-making  on  an  important  scale,  and  much  more,  are  insuf- 
ficient even  to  damp  his  first  youthful  ardor.  His  intellectual 
powers,  too,  have  not  been  outrun  by  his  energy ;  he  has  given 
unquestionable  proofs  of  a  rare  order  of  talent :  the  speedy 
and  joyous  subjugation  of  every  new  science  wiiich  came  in 
his  way,  the  suggestion  of  a  theory  upon  v/hich,  and  perhaps 
upon  which  alone,  Scripture  and  geology  can  be  shown  to  be 
in  harmony,  the  acquisition  of  a  clear,  glowing,   and  finely 


4?2  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

balanced  style.  There  is  sufficient  proof,  also,  that  he  has 
already  conceived,  in  outline,  a  whole  scheme  of  Christian  evi- 
dence. Lastly,  and  of  ail  most  decisive,  he  has  begun  to  make 
his  influence  distinctly  felt  among  the  men  who  came  within 
its  sphere ;  Chalmers  of  Kilmany  has  become  one  to  whom 
eyes  are  turned,  and  concerning  whom  expectations  are  formed ; 
the  invisible  crown  set  by  nature  on  his  brow  is  slowly  wax- 
ing visible.  And  whatever  may  be  doubted,  it  is  certain  that 
his  moral  qualities  are  of  the  kingly  order.  Courage  to  defy 
a  whole  university,  tenderness  to  weep  in  the  garden  at  Blen- 
heim, enthusiastic  loyalty  both  in  the  pulpit  and  in  the  ranks, 
an  ever  open  hand,  wakeful  and  ardent  sympathy  with  all  that 
is  high,  and  pure,  and  healthful ;  these,  and  similar  traits  of 
nobleness,  can  not  fail  to  evince  that  here  is  another  of  those 
whom,  from  the  ancient  time,  nature  has  intended  for  trust, 
honor  and  love. 

But  it  must  be  conceded  that,  in  an  estimate  of  the  character 
and  powers  of  Chalmers  during  this  youthful  period,  no  ex- 
press reference  is  necessary  to  Christianity  :  Chalmers,  in  fact, 
was  then  a  Christian  pastor,  in  a  sense  and  manner  which,  we 
think,  is  now  becoming  obsolete.  The  last  century  produced 
in  Scotland  a  form,  we  should,  perhaps,  rather  say  a  semblance, 
of  Christianity,  v/hich  will  probably  never  re-appear.  It  was 
the  result  of  the  general  decay  of  earnestness  over  the  land, 
and  the  sickly  flowering  of  a  sentimental  and  wordy  philoso- 
phistic  morality.  From  the  religion  of  the  Puritan  and  Cove- 
nanter, there  was  a  recoil ;  to  be  virtuous  was  good  and  fair, 
honor  and  truth  were  to  be  commended,  sublime  benevolence 
was  to  be  preached ;  but  to  defy  earth  and  hell  for  your  belief, 
to  worship  God  under  the  mist  of  the  mountain  corrie,  or 
mount  the  scaffold  rather  than  throw  a  sand-grain  in  the  eye 
of  conscience,  were  the  follies  of  bigotry  and  excitement,  pro- 


THOMAS    CHALMERS.  423 

duced  endless  commotion,  and  even  endangered  the  interests 
of  general  morality  and  respectable  society.  The  great  dis- 
tinctive doctrines  of  Christianity  were,  probably,  ii\  some 
sense  true ;  to  deny  them  altogether  would  utterly  stultify 
the  Bible ;  but  tliey  were  to  be  c  uietly  considered  incompre- 
hensible, and,  as  strictly  esoteric  mysteries,  to  be  carefully 
xcluded  from  public  ministrations.  Who  is  not  familiar  with 
vhe  watchwords  of  the  honey-mouthed  school,  which  came  then 
to  occupy  the  pulpits  of  the  church  of  Knox  ?  Virtue  its  own 
reward,  white-robed  innocence  descending  from  heaven  (in  no 
great  haste),  decorum  and  decency,  prim  of  visage  and  trim 
of  garb,  the  enlightenment  of  the  age,  the  happiness  of  the 
greatest  number,  flowed  blandly  forth  as  the  preaching  of 
Christianity.  The  art  of  the  preacher  then  was  softly  to  mouth 
truism,  skillfully  to  gild  commonplace.  Tiiat  school  produced 
Blair.  It  is  interesting  to  observe  what  it  made  of  Paul.  We 
have  happened  to  see  a  sermon  or  two  in  which  the  attem.pt 
was  made  to  depict  him  as  a  Christian  orator.  The  fiery  and 
urgent  man,  Y/hose  words  flame  and  burn  on  the  page,  who 
startled  the  philosophic  serenity  of  the  sages  of  Athens,  and 
uttered  his  grand  song  of  triumph  in  the  very  scowl  of  Nero, 
who  could  not  open  his  lips  without  speaking  of  Jesus  Christ 
and  Him  crucified,  who  abandoned,  in  express  terms,  as  differ- 
ent in  idea  from  Christianity,  the  wisdom  of  Greece  and  the 
morality  of  law,  was  represented  standing,  in  polite  and  grace- 
ful attitude,  and  lecturing  Felix,  for  more  than  half  an  hour, 
)n  virtue,  mercy,  justice,  and  respectability  in  general,  cau- 
tiously avoiding  the  "mysteries"  of  the  Christian  religion, 
and  recom^mending  it  to  his  weak  hearer  in  a  soft  and  harm- 
less garb  borrowed  from  Seneca.  The  effect  over  the  country 
was  simple  and  decisive.    The  heart  of  the  Scottish  people 


424  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

turned  from  the  ir.oclern  school :  the  popular  instinct  nanied 
it — moderate. 

It  may  be  thought  strange  that  such  a  man  as  Chalmers 
could  ever  have  been  a  follower  of  such  a  school  as  this. 
Yet  it  is  a  fact  admitting  of  no  question.  Christianity  had 
never  fairly  laid  its  grasp  on  his  heart ;  he  had  never  pro- 
foundly considered  whether  it  vras  the  real  living  Christianity 
he  had  or  no.  He  is  a  striking  example  of  the  not  unusual 
phenomenon  of  a  man  whose  natural  force  and  nobleness  will 
be  unparalyzed  by  any  influence  of  school  or  creed.  But  it 
may  be  that  this  easy-suiting  garment  called  Christianity  is 
not  really  adapted  to  display  the  herculean  mold  of  his  limbs ; 
it  may  be  in  the  garb  of  the  warrior,  in  the  old  mail  of  the 
martyr,  that  we  can  best  discern  the  strength  and  majesty  of 
his  frame.     Let  us  proceed. 

At  about  the  age  of  thirty,  Chalmers  engaged  to  write  the 
article  Christianity  for  the  Edinburgh  Encyclopaedia.  In  the 
midst  of  the  study  and  composition  connected  with  this  article, 
he  was  attacked  by  a  severe  illness,  which  confined  him  for  a 
period  of  four  months.  It  was  an  era  in  his  history;  the 
most  important  era  of  all.  It  was  from  it  that  he  dated  what 
was  to  him,  and  appears  to  us,  the  great  fact  of  his  life — his 
conversion.  ^ 

Death  had,  of  late,  more  than  once  passed  by  Chalmers, 
casting  on  him  the  pale  glare  of  his  eye ;  one  after  another 
of  his  brothers  and  sisters  had  been  carried  to  the  grave.  At 
length  the  impartial  foot  seemed  to  be  drawing  near  to  his  ov/n 
threshold  ;  he  felt  no  coward  fear,  but,  with  an  earnest  calm 
ness  that  he  had  not  hitherto  known,  he  began  to  think.  Fear 
was  no  important  agent  in  the  mental  revolution  which  ensued ; 
the  state  of  mind  indicated  by  Bunyan's  Slough  of  Despond, 
he  expressly  says,  he  never  experienced.     His  nature  was  of 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  425 

the  nob.er  sort,  which  is  drawn  by  a  glimpse  of  heaven,  and 
that  a  heaven  of  holiness,  rather  than  by  an  unvailing  of  hell. 
He  could  not  but  discern  that  there  had  been  something  in  the 
breasts  of  the  early  Christians  which  was  not  in  his.  Eternity, 
in  its  unmeasured  vastness,  enwrapped  his  mind ;  time,  seen 
against  its  burning  radiance,  seemed  dream-like  and  filmy. 
The  virtue  of  philosophy,  he  began  profoundly  to  suspect,  was 
not  the  holiness  of  God.  Tlie  power  of  this  virtue,  too,  to 
do  much  toward  the  regeneration  of  the  world,  became  ques- 
tionable. His  old  friend  Godwin,  in  discoursing  of  justice, 
had  spoken  thus :  "  A  comprehensive  maxim  which  has  been 
laid  down  upon  the  subject,  is,  '  that  we  should  love  our  neigh- 
bor as  ourselves.'  But  this  maxim,  though  possessing  consid- 
erable merit  as  a  popular  principle,  is  not  modeled  with  the 
strictness  of  philosophical  accuracy."  Chalmers  hardly  found 
this  maxim,  defective  as  it  might  be,  conformed  to  in  the 
parish  of  Kilmany ;  all  his  appeals  on  the  subject,  in  fact,  had 
been  received  with  imperturbable  calmness  ;  he  had  discerned 
no  effect  whatever  from  lectures,  however  impassioned,  on 
virtue  and  benevolence.  In  his  own  heart,  and  in  his  sphere 
of  work,  something  seemed  essentially  wrong.  And  so  there 
commenced  a  work  in  the  privacy  of  his  closet,  which  may, 
without  any  figure,  be  said  to  have  resulted  in  the  kindling  of 
a  new  vital  energy  in  the  center  of  his  being.  Its  progress 
was  gradual,  but  every  step  was  taken  irrevocably ;  its  con- 
clusion found  Chalmers  transformed  from  a  historic  into  a  vital 
Christian,  from  a  philosophic  into  a  Christian  pastor.  Christ 
had  become  to  him  all  in  all.  "We  shall  not  intrude  into  the 
privacy  of  his  closet  while  the  great  change  is  taking  place. 
We  shall  not  attempt  to  trace  the  fading  of  old  things  into 
oblivion  and  death,  and  their  gradual  resurrection  as  all  things 
become  new  in  Christianity.     We  shall  not  venture  to  watch 


4:26  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

the  soul  in  its  pleadings  with  God,  until,  at  last,  that  wonder- 
ful passage  bears  personal  reference  to  Chalmers,  "  the  king- 
dom of  God  is  within  you."  But  we  can  not  forbear  remarking 
the  appearance  of  weakness  which  presents  itself  when  we 
look  into  that  closet.  It  recalls  the  "  hysterical  tears  of  a 
soldierlike  Cromwell,"  the  "delusion,"  whose  strength  "scarcely 
any  mad-house  could  equal,"  of  Bunyan ;  there  is  not,  certainly 
such  intensity  of  feeling,  but  the  sense  of  a  divine  presence 
and  agency  is  the  same.  We  hear  him  earnestly  pleading  for 
pardon,  though  his  life  has  been  most  virtuous  ;  he  calls  him- 
self a  sinner,  though  always  respectable  ;  he  trembles,  although 
surely  God  is  good.  His  soul  is  prostrate.  What  can  we 
hope  for  from  the  like  of  this  1  What  advantage  has  it  over 
the  most  "  melancholy  whimpering"  of  flmaticism,  of  which 
Chalmers  could  once  speak  1  May  we  not  apprehend  a  total 
relaxation  of  energy,  a  total  shriveling  of  intellect  1  Time 
will  answer  the  questions.  Meanwhile,  one  point  of  consider- 
able moment  may  be  remarked.  It  is  before  the  Infinite  God 
he  stoops !  It  may  be  deemed  possible,  that  conscious  alliance 
with  the  Infinite  will  not  make  him  weak  among  the  finite ; 
possibly,  when  he  once  feels  that  the  eye  of  God  is  actually 
fixed  on  him,  the  light  of  all  other  eyes,  whether  in  wrath  or 
in  applause,  may  grow  dim ;  perhaps,  when  he  lays  down  the 
philosophic  armor  in  which  he  has  trusted,  he  may  go  forth 
in  the  strength  of  weakness,  mightier  than  before.  "  'Tis  con- 
science," said  Coleridge,  "  that  makes  cowards  of  us  all ;  but 
oh !  it  is  conscience,  too,  which  makes  heroes  of  us  all." 

Times  are  changed  in  the  manse  and  parish  of  Kilmany. 
The  minister  is  changed,  and  many  changes  follow.  One  by 
one,  the  worldly  aspirations  that  have  fired  the  breast  of  Chal- 
mers fade  away ;  reluctantly  but  resolutely,  the  eye  is  averted 
from  university  honors  ;  reluctantly  but  irreversibly,  the  de- 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  427 

termination  is  taken,  and  the  mathematical  volume  closed. 
One  great  idea  embraces  his  soul  like  an  atmosphere,  the  glory 
of  God ;  one  great  work  lies  before  him,  to  manifest  that  glory 
in  the  good  of  man.  His  soul  now  gushes  forth  at  all  seasons 
in  prayer :  his  aim  with  himself  is  no  longer  to  preserve  an 
unblemished  walk  before  men,  and  to  have  the  testimony  of 
his  heart  that  he  possesses  the  manly  virtue  of  the  schools ;  his 
aim  is  the  inward  heaven  of  Christianity,  the  mental  atmos- 
phere that  angels  breathe,  unsullied  purity  of  thought  and 
emotion  in  that  inmost  dwelling  where  hypocrisy  can  not  come : 
his  aim  with  his  people  is  no  longer  merely  to  repress  dishon- 
esty, to  promote  sobriety,  and  produce  respectability  in  gen- 
eral ;  it  is  to  turn  them  to  righteousness,  that  they  may  be  his 
joy  and  rejoicing  in  the  day  of  the  Lord ;  it  is  to  array  them 
in  that  robe,  purer  than  seraphs'  clothing,  in  which  not  even 
the  eye  of  God  can  find  a  stain ;  it  is  to  lead  them  with  him 
as  a  people  into  the  light  of  God's  countenance. 

His  parishioners,  meanwhile,  are  astonished.  They  see  by 
"  the  glory  in  his  eye"  that  some  strange  new  light  has  dawned 
upon  him.  They  sat  listless  while  he  descanted  on  the  beauty 
of  virtue,  but  they  can  not  sit  unmoved  while  his  heart  glows 
within  him,  and  his  face  seems  suffused  with  a  transfisurino; 
radiance,  as  he  unvails  the  beauty  of  holiness,  and  turns  their 
eyes  to  the  wonders  of  Infinite  Love  streaming  through  Jesus 
down  upon  the  world.  Nor  can  their  apathy  maintain  itself, 
when  he  carries  his  ministrations  into  the  domestic  circle,  and 
with  burning  earnestness  presses  home  individually  the  offers 
and  the  appeals  of  the  Gospel.  The  parish  of  Kilmany  glows 
with  returning  Christianity  like  the  fields  of  opening  summer. 
For  it  is  no  partial  change  that  has  come  over  Chalmers. 
Partial  characteristics  were  never  his ;  halfness  went  against 
the  grain  of  his  nature ;  he  had  held  all  his  beliefs  firmly. 


428  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

And  now,  in  the  manhood  of  his  powers,  when  the  feeling  was 
beginning  slowly  to  permeate  Scotland,  that  a  man  of  master- 
ing intellect  had  arisen  in  the  land,  after  he  had  long  and  dili- 
gently walked  in  the  path  of  this  world,  he  was  arrested  as  by 
a  blaze  of  light  from  heaven,  smitten  awhile  to  the  ground, 
and  then  raised  up  a  new  man,  a  Christian.  He  had  formerly 
known  the  God  of  the  fatalist,  and  had  bowed,  in  a  certain 
ecstatic  awe,  before  Him  ;  now  he  knew  the  God  of  the  Chris- 
tian, and  believed  Him  to  be  love.  He  had  never  worshiped 
sinful  self;  now  even  righteous  self  was  crucified.  Ah !  it  was 
a  great  day  for  Scotland  when  Chalmers,  in  all  the  might  of 
his  manhood,  became  vitally  Christian. 

It  was  about  this  time,  in  August,  1812,  that  jllhalmers  mar- 
ried Miss  Grace  Pratt.  Of  his  domestic  concerns  it  is  unne- 
cessary to  say  more  than  that  his  home  was  one  of  deep  and 
tranquil  comfort,  in  all  embarrassment,  toil,  and  opposition,  a 
sanctuary  of  inviolable  repose. 

But  his  fame  has  been  extending  ;  the  news  that  some  mys- 
terious change  has  passed  over  the  minister  of  Kilmany  has 
thrilled  electrically  over  Scotland.  Such  oratory  has  not  been 
heard  in  these  parts  in  the  memory  of  man.  It  speedily  be- 
comes known  that  one  of  the  greatest  preachers  in  the  Church 
of  Scotland  ministers  weekly  in  a  sequestered  valley  near  the 
estuary  of  the  Tay.  A  feeling  of  deep  gladness  begins  to  per- 
vade the  evangelical  party,  as  the  new  leader,  strong  and  in- 
domitable as  a  youthful  Hannibal,  steps  forward  to  take  the 
command.  And  hark,  from  the  respectable,  soft-going,  mod- 
erately-religious ministers,  what  voice  is  that  1  "  As  for  Chal- 
mers, he  is  mad !"  What  a  piece  of  testimony  is  here ! 
How  decisive,  how  comforting !  "  Paul,  thou  art  beside 
thyself" 

This  fortuitous  sneer  about  madness  is  not  void  of  suggest- 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  429 

ive  meaning.  Look  at  the  great  workers  and  warriors,  the 
great  thinkers  and  governors,  all  who  have  been  of  the  kings 
of  the  earth  :  docs  not  their  power,  in  one  universal  aspect  of 
it,  admit  of  definition  thus— A  force  as  of  madness  in  the  hand 
of  reason  1  In  our  age,  we  find  two  men  who  pointedly  sug- 
gest this  combination :  Thomas  Chalmers,  and,  perhaps  still 
more  forcibly,  Thomas  Carlyle. 

But  the  sequestered  Fifeshire  valley  can  not  retain  Scot- 
land's greatest  preacher.  The  Tron  Church  in  Glasgow  be- 
comes vacant ;  and  after  a  sharp  contest,  in  which  he  is  pitted 
against  Principal  ]\Iacfarlane,  Chalmers  is  appointed  its  minis- 
ter. Calmly  balancing  arguments,  he  concludes  that  the  hand 
of  God  is  in  the  arrangement,  and  that  it  is  his  duty  to  go ; 
but  he  is  well  aware  that  he  leaves  tranquillity  for  turmoil, 
the  trust  and  tenderness  of  personal  friendship  for  the  din  and 
vacancy  of  public  station  and  applause  ;  he  bids  adieu  to  his 
quiet  valley  and  its  one  hundred  and  fifty  families  with  deep 
and  honest  sadness.  "  Oh !"  he  said,  long  afterward,  "  there 
was  more  tearing  of  the  heart-strings  at  leaving  the  valley  of 
Kilmany,  than  at  leaving  all  my  great  parish  of  Glasgow." 

It  was  some  time  after  quitting  Kilmany,  that  Chalmers  in 
an  address  to  his  former  parishioners,  bore  that  emphatic  and 
weighty  testimony  to  the  power  of  evangelical  Christianity  as 
a  moral  agency,  which  has  been  so  often  quoted  and  referred 
to.  He  distinctly  declared  that  his  preaching  of  mere  virtue 
had  been  absolutely  powerless ;  but  that  the  proclamation  of 
God's  love  in  Christ  Jesus  was  at  once  mighty.  We  accept 
his  words  as  an  additional  and  important  attestation,  that  the 
simple  truths  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  are  gifted  with  a  power 
to  lay  hold  upon  and  impress  healthy  and  unsophisticated  in- 
tellects, which  belongs  to  no  moral  or  philosophical  dogmas. 
In  Chalmers,  Christianity  was  seen  in  its  ancient  fresliness, 


430 


THOMAS     CHALMERS. 


beauty,  and  power;  and  in  our  century  he  founi  its  might  to 
purify  the  hearts  and  lives  of  men,  to  breathe  moral  health 
over  a  people,  to  radiate  light  around,  as  prevailing  as  when 
the  star  led  the  way  to  Bethlehem.  He  was,  and  any  man 
like  him  will  be,  a  center  of  beneficent  influence.  Such  talents 
as  his  must  ever  continue  rare ;  but  think  what  were  the  effect 
to  be  looked  for  from  a  pastorate,  whose  members  all  resem- 
bled him  in  the  single  but  paramount  circumstance  of  his  god- 
liness. Imagine  the  land  sown  v/ith  pastors  kindled  as  by 
divine  fire  with  that  ambition  which  God,  in  a  promise  un- 
speakably glorious,  has  appointed  for  them :  "  They  that  turn 
many  to  righteousness  shall  shine  as  the  stars  forever  and 
ever."  We  will  maintain  that  it  lies  within  the  discernible 
and  traceable  power  of  a  truly  Christian  ministry,  to  shed  over 
our  land  a  brightness  as  of  the  resurrection  morning.  The  na- 
tion would  live  anew  ;  the  golden  day  would  break ;  the  bale- 
ful forms  and  influences  of  crime  would  be  smitten ;  and  infi- 
dels, as  they  saw  the  serpents  which  now  cast  their  deadly 
coils  round  the  limbs  of  the  nation,  writhing,  with  dazed  eyes 
and  relaxing  hold,  in  the  overpowering  light,  would  be  aston- 
ished and  silenced. 

From  the  time  of  his  settlement  in  the  west  may  be  dated 
the  commencement  of  that  intellectual  kingship  which  Chal- 
mers can  be  said  to  have  long  exercised  over  the  great  body 
of  the  Scottish  nation.  He  now  steps  forth  mto  that  arena 
where  are  the  severest  tests  of  greatness.  He  becomes  the 
cynosure  of  a  city  and  people ;  he  reads  applause  in  every  eye ; 
ne  hears  it  from  every  tongue.  Now  is  the  time  to  know 
what  he  really  is.  Does  Chalmers  in  elevation  seem  in  his 
natural  station  and  atmosphere  ?  Does  he,  amid  noise  and 
pretense,  lose  the  power  of  distinguishing  and  prizing  real 
work  1     Can  he  gauge  and  measure  fame,  and  put  it  to  its 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  431 

uses  like  any  other  dispensation  of  God  ?  Can  he  distinguish 
between  adulation  streaming  in  from  all  the  winds,  and 
which,  in  all  its  varieties,  is  either  mere  vacant  sound  or  self- 
ishness set  to  music,  from  the  still  but  immortal  voice  of 
friendship  ?  Does  he  give  indications  of  an  unsettled,  weakly 
enthusiastic,  or  flmatical  mind "?  Are  his  air  and  attitude  those 
of  one  who  has  drugged  his  intellect  with  an  "  opiate  delusion," 
and  rushes  wildly  and  vaguely  on,  with  haste  for  energy,  and 
vociferous  dogmatism  for  thought '?  These  are  fair  and  im- 
portant questions ;  the  answers  will  gradually  unfold  them- 
selves. 

No  sooner  do  we  find  him  fairly  in  the  midst  of  the  tumult 
and  glare  of  his  Glasgow  popularity ;  no  sooner  do  we  perceive 
his  words  swaying  the  minds  of  thousands,  his  house  the  center 
of  admiring  throngs,  his  fame  a  theme  and  topic  in  the  city, 
than  we  are  arrested  by  an  instance  of  retired  and  tender  affec- 
tion. There  is  a  member  of  his  congregation,  aged  twenty. 
The  delicacy  and  beauty  of  his  thoughts,  the  purity  of  his  as- 
pirations, the  general  nobleness  of  his  nature,  draws  toward 
him  the  heart  of  Chalmers.  There  springs  up  between  them 
a  close,  confiding,  boy-like  friendship ;  tender  and  impassioned 
as  any  friendship  of  romance,  yet  cemented  by  the  holier  sym- 
pathy of  Christian  love.  Their  "  loves  in  higher  love  endure ;" 
to  endure  forever.  We  can  not  but  deem  it  a  strange  specta- 
cle in  our  hard-working  century,  where  ideals  are  so  few ; — 
.Chalmers,  the  most  renowned  preacher,  perhaps  in  the  world, 
and  certainly  in  Scotland,  walking  by  the  side  of  his  boy-par- 
ishioner, and  pouring  out  his  heart  in  all  the  endearments  of 
a  soft,  almost  womanly  affection.  If  you  would  thoroughly 
know  the  man,  look  long  upon  that  spectacle.  The  trumpet- 
ing of  flime  brings  no  comfort  to  him,  he  permits  it  to  die 
away  in  the  far  distance ;  but  now  he  finds  one  heart  w  here 


432  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

pure  love  dwells,  he  kno\YS  that  this  at  least  is  real,  he  folds 
his  friend  to  his  breast  in  an  ecstasy  of  fondness,  he  walks  by 
his  side  under  the  blue  sky,  listening  to  his  voice,  in  deep  se- 
rene delight,  as  to  a  strain  of  spiritual  music.  Or  look  into 
his  closet,  and  see  the  friends  on  their  knees  before  God,  the 
fiery  Chalmers  and  the  mild  Thomas  Smith,  to  whom  his  heart 
is  soft  as  a  fountain.  Smith  gradually  faded  away  in  a  con- 
sumption ;  often,  with  tearful  eye,  did  his  pastor  bend  over  his 
bed,  or  kneel  by  its  side ;  and  when,  at  last,  he  lay  in  death's 
pallor,  the  strong,  manly  face  of  Chalmers  vf  as  bathed  in  uncon- 
trolable  tears.  From  of  old  it  has  been  known,  that  valor 
and  tenderness  form  the  noblest  and  most  beautiful  union  ;  the 
lion  heart  and  strength,  guided  by  maiden  gentleness ;  perhaps 
all  the  true  and  brave  are  tender.  We  feel  this  simple  story 
of  his  friendship  for  Thomas  Smith  bring  us  into  closer  knowl- 
edge, and,  as  it  were,  contact  with  the  heart  and  nature  of 
Chalmers,  than  would  the  mere  record  of  his  fame,  if  echoed 
through  centuries. 

It  was  in  the  close  of  the  year  1815,  that  his  renown  in 
Glasgow  culminated.  He  then  delivered  his  famed  Astro- 
nomical Discourses.  They  were  preached  on  week-days,  yet 
the  audience  crowded  the  church.  There  was  a  reading-room 
opposite  the  edifice  :  during  the  time  of  delivery  it  stood  va- 
cant; the  merchant  and  the  politician  pouring  out,  to  hang 
breathless  on  the  lips  of  Chalmers.  His  style  was  now  fully 
formed,  and  was,  in  many  respects,  extraordinary ;  perfectly 
dissimilar  from  any  other  English  style,  unallied  in  diction  and 
cadence  to  any  foreign  language,  it  was  the  native  growth  of 
his  mind,  an  original  birth  of  genius.  And  whatever  minor  or 
particular  exceptions  may  be  taken  to  that  style,  we  can  not 
regard  it  as  a  matter  open  to  dispute,  that  it  is  possessed  of 
marvelous  power  and  grandeur.     Massive  and  gorgeous,  ex- 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  433 

prcssive,  often  graphic,  yet  with  a  certain  billowy  regularity 
of  sentence  and  rolling  cadence  of  rhythm,  it  was  in  the  hand 
of  its  own  magician  a  really  mighty  weapon.  Exuberant  to 
what  in  written  composition  seems  diffuseness,  it  might,  if  used 
by  a  weakling,  sound  like  bombast ;  but  its  exuberance  is  that 
of  tropic  woods,  and  ocean  waves,  and  rainbowed  cataracts,  the 
teeming  and  varied  opulence  of  a  mind  of  boundless  sympathy, 
the  grand  luxuriance  of  nature ;  and  when  the  curbless  intens- 
ity of  the  preacher's  fire  burned  in  its  every  word,  when  the 
glittering  eye,  and  glowing  features,  and  fiery  gesticulation, 
proved  that  even  its  abundance  sufficed  not  to  body  forth  the 
earnestness  of  Chalmers,  all  thought  of  bombast  or  diffuseness 
fled,  and  the  effect  was  tremendous.  The  true  power  of  the 
orator  was  his ;  he  could  subject  men  not  merely  to  his  reason 
but  to  his  will.  The  witnesses  to  the  effect  of  his  eloquence 
are  so  numerous  and  explicit,  that  doubt  is  no  longer  possible 
on  the  subject.  When  the  thunder  was  at  its  height,  when  his 
eye  blazed  with  that  strange  watery  gleam  of  which  we  hear, 
men  involuntarily  moved  their  bodies,  and,  though  in  postures 
which  would  ordinarily  occasion  pain,  were  unconscious  of  a 
sensation ;  when  there  was  a  pause,  a  sigh  arose  from  the  con- 
gregation ;  strong  men,  even  learned  men,  wept. 

We  may  form  some  conception  of  the  impression  made  by 
these  Dicourses,  when  even  now  we  consider  their  general 
tenor.  The  theme,  whatever  may  be  said  concerning  its  argu- 
mentative value  or  treatment,  is  sublime ;  it  is  handled,  too, 
precisely  in  the  way  to  give  it  power  in  the  pulpit ;  every  point 
is  brought  out  with  such  boldness,  that  no  eye  can  fail  to  see 
it ;  there  is  no  wire-drawing,  no  soft  murmuring,  no  delicate 
penciling,  no  easy  meandering ;  each  vast  wave  comes  rolling 
on,  fringed  with  its  own  gorgeous  foam,  and  echoing  its  own 
thunder.     If  we  consent  to  place  ourselves  under  the  wizard 

19 


434  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

eye  of  the  orator,  if  at  one  moment  we  mark  its  rapt  and  fiery 
gleam,  as  if  lit  in  sympathy  with  those  seraph  eyes  which  it 
saw  looking  from  the  empyrean  ;  if,  at  another,  we  watch  the 
deeper  softness  of  its  azure  glow,  while  it  seems  to  gaze  on 
Mercy  unfolding  her  wings ;  and  if  we  surrender  ourselves  to 
the  combination  of  influences,  as  voice,  features,  and  subject, 
are  all  at  last  in  climax,  it  will  surely  be  no  longer  impossible 
to  conceive  the  effect,  when  the  ocean  billow,  after  long  gather- 
ing, broke. 

An  elaborate  and  detailed  criticism  of  these  sermons  is  now 
superfluous.  Many  objections  have  been  taken  to  their  logic ; 
and  Foster  stands,  doubtless,  not  alone,  in  objecting  to  their 
style.  For  our  own  part,  we  confess  that  our  admiration  is 
intense.  They  appear  to  us  to  have  the  true  poetic  glow ;  that 
fusing,  uniting  fire  burns  over  them,  whose  gleam  compels  you 
to  drop  your  measuring-line  or  gauging  apparatus,  and  utter 
the  word — genius.  To  accompany  the  preacher  in  his  high 
flight,  seems  to  us  like  sailing  with  that  archangel  whom 
Richter,  in  his  dream,  saw  bearing  the  mortal  through  the 
endless  choirs  and  galaxies  of  immensity ;  only  that  here  we 
do  not  tremble  and  cry  out  at  the  overpowering  spectacle  of 
God's  infinitude,  for  the  softening  light  of  the  Cross  falls  con- 
tinually around  us.  And,  after  all  we  have  heard,  the  logic 
of  these  marvelous  Discourses  is  to  us  satisfactory.  It  has 
been  said  that  the  argument  against  which  they  are  leveled  is 
weak  and  obsolete.  We  suspect  it  is  neither ;  save  in  a  sense 
applying  to  infidel  arguments  in  general.  Walking  in  a  still 
autumn  night  in  the  country,  by  the  faintly-rustling  corn-field 
or  the  lonely  wood,  and  gazing  upward  to  the  illimitable  vault, 
where  the  stars  in  their  courses  walk  silent  and  beautiful,  and 
where  the  milky-way,  with  its  myriad  worlds,  lies  along  the 
purple  of  night  like  a  breath  of  God's  nostrils,  is  it  unnatural 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  435 

for  the  human  being  to  say,  Can  the  Son  of  the  Almighty  have 
come  to  die  for  atoms  such  as  I,  in  such  an  atom  as  is  this 
^yo^ld  of  ours  ?  If  such  a  thought  is  powerless  with  many 
minds,  we  suspect  it  is  very  forcible  with  others :  we  know  it 
is  so  with  some.  And  after  calm  reflection,  what  do  we  finally 
arrive  at  in  the  case,  as  the  seemly  and  reasonable  attitude  of 
him  who  is  a  feeble  and  puny  denizen  of  earth,  yet  a  spirit  of 
thought  and  immortality  ?  It  appears  to  be  twofold.  Look- 
ing toward  the  stars,  it  is  seemly  for  him  to  bow  his  head  in 
lowliness  and  gratitude,  and  say,  with  the  monarch  minstrel, 
"  What  is  man  that  Thou  art  mindful  of  him,  and  the  son  of 
man  that  Thou  regardest  him  1"  But  then,  looking  to  the  corn 
God  has  raised  to  nourish  him,  the  animals  over  which  God 
has  made  him  king,  the  fair  world  He  has  from  of  old  preparec^ 
for  him,  the  still  princely  retinue  or  army  of  faculties  he  has 
given  him,  to  master  it  and  to  count  the  stars,  he  may  turn  with 
reasonable  faithful  joy  to  the  Son  of  David,  and  listen  to  Him 
as  he  says,  "  Consider  the  lilies  of  the  field,  how  they  grow ; 
they  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin ;  and  yet  I  say  unto  you, 
that  even  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like  one  of 
these.  Wherefore,  if  God  so  clothe  the  grass  of  the  field, 
which  to-day  is,  and  to-morrow  is  cast  into  the  oven,  shall  He 
not  much  more  clothe  you,  O  ye  of  little  faith  f  This  seems 
the  true  attitude.  This  last  is  the  satisfactory  answer  to  the 
infidel  argument,  and  it  is  this  answer  which  Chalmers,  w^ith 
all  the  force  lent  it  by  modern  science,  re-enunciated.  The 
telescope  may  keep  men  humble,  but  it  can  not  crush  him  into 
insignificance ;  the  microscope  shows  ever  how  the  world  of 
littleness  stretches  away,  as  if  to  infinitude,  under  his  feet. 
And  if  the  might  of  Omnipotence  can  arrange,  in  their  un- 
speakable delicacy,  the  tendrils  of  the  corals  in  the  depths  of 
ocean,  and  bring  to  maturity  colonies  and  nations,  in  all  the 


436  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

animation  of  their  life  and  the  glow  of  their  costume,  within 
the  bosom  of  a  flower,  and  reach  a  perfection  of  beauty,  after 
which  art  toils  at  what  may  be  called  an  infinite  distance,  in 
the  rainbow  He  hangs  in  every  mountain  brook,  will  He  not 
wipe  away  a  stain  as  if  from  His  own  forehead,  will  He  not 
humble  His  great  adversary  on  a  territory  He  hoped  he  had 
won,  will  He  not  amend  the  one  imperfection  in  the  worlds 
sin  1  And  is  it  not  in  consistence  with  the  glory  of  His  name, 
that,  thus  to  vindicate  Himself,  He  has  made  a  display  of 
mercy  and  condescension  at  which  heaven  and  earth  may  stand 
agaze  ? 

Chalmers  had  now  fairly  reached  the  pinnacle  of  Scottish 
renown.  The  heart  of  the  populace  throbbed  responsively  to 
his  eloquence  ;  and  from  perhaps  the  highest  personal  author- 
ity then  in  Scotland,  from  Jeffrey  of  the  Edinburg  Review,  it 
received  this  testimony  :  "  I  know  not  what  it  is,  but  there  is 
something  altogether  remarkable  about  that  man.  It  reminds 
me  more  of  what  one  reads  of  as  the  effect  of  the  eloquence  of 
Demosthenes,  than  any  thing  I  ever  heard." 

And  now,  when  his  Astronomical  Discourses  had,  with  far- 
reaching  trumpet-flourish,  heralded  his  approach,  he  proceeded 
to  London. 

On  the  day  after  his  arrival  in  the  metropolis,  he  preached 
in  Surrey  Chapel.  The  service  began  at  eleven ;  at  seven  in 
the  morning  the  place  was  filled.  At  length  Chalmers  ascends 
the  pulpit,  and  all  eyes  are  centered  there.  The  sermon  com- 
mences. The  face  of  the  preacher  has  a  certain  heavy  look, 
over  its  pale,  rough-hewn,  leonine  lineaments ;  his  eyelids 
droop  slightly,  and  his  eyes  have  something  at  once  dreamy 
and  sad  in  their  expression ;  his  voice  is  thin,  somewhat  broken, 
unimpressive ;  his  tone  may  be  called  drawling,  and  his  dia- 
lect is  broadly,  almost  unintelligibly  provincial.     The  London 


THOMAS    CHALMERS.  437 

audience  sits  cool  and  business-like,  not  given  to  tumultuous 
emotion,  and  accustomed  to  moral  essays ;  eye  meets  eye  in 
half-disappointed  surmise.  But  look,  Chalmers  is  beginning 
to  move ;  he  gradually  works  himself  into  the  heart  of  his 
subject ;  his  voice  is  becoming  loud,  rich,  impassioned :  the 
Londoners  sit  still  unmoved,  but  now  no  eyes  are  wandering  ; 
the  preacher  warms,  the  latent  heat  within  is  beginning  to  be 
evolved ;  he  curbs  his  spirit  sternly,  but  it  will  bear  him  away : 
his  auditors  are  silent,  a  consciousness  of  some  strange  enchain- 
ing power  begins  to  pervade  the  place,  but  the  light  in  the 
thousand  eyes  fixed  on  Chalmers  is  still  in  great  measure  that 
of  criticism ;  the  Londoners  still  know  where  they  are :  the 
orator  warms  swiftly  to  white  heat ;  his  face  is  radiant  with 
earnestness;  the  distending  eyeball  swims;  at  last  the  fire 
within  lights  in  it  that  wondrous  watery  gleam  which  tells  that 
the  spirit  of  Chalmers  is  in  the  last  passion  and  agony  of  its 
might :  his  audience  have  forgotten  where  they  sit ;  they  bend 
forward  in  simultaneous  assent  to  his  every  paragraph ;  he  has 
chained  them  to  the  chariot- wheels  of  his  eloquence. 

Report  of  the  new  wonder  flies  over  London.  Fashion  hears 
of  him  in  her  glittering  saloons  ;  senators  and  peers  speak  of 
him  in  their  halls  and  cabinets.  The  highest  and  gayest  in  the 
land  crowd  to  hear  him.  "All  the  world,"  writes  Wilberforce, 
in  his  journal,  "  wild  about  Chalmers."  Chancellors  and  lords 
desire  to  be  introduced  to  him  ;  the  lord-mayor  visits  him ; 
mighty  London  seems  to  do  him  homage. 

The  spectacle  is  strange ;  the  test  the  man  has  to  stand  is 
searching.  From  the  still  and  sequestered  vale  of  Kilmany, 
he  has  ascended  to  the  highest  summit  of  cotemporary  fame. 
He  was  alj  unregarded  in  his  quiet  parish  ;  he  has  now  the 
great  ones  of  the  earth  becking  and  applauding  round  him  ; 
there  is  a  shout  in  his  ears  as  if  he  were  more  than  human 


438  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

Let  us  not  fail  to  perceive  the  danger  and  difficulty  of  his  situ- 
ation. The  assenting  voice  of  one  fellow-creature  has  been 
said  by  one  of  the  best  of  judges  to  "  strengthen  even  infin- 
itely" any  opinion  a  man  may  have  formed,  and  a  flattering 
opinion  of  one's-self  is  so  easy  to  strengthen ;  amid  the  vocif- 
erous plaudits  of  thousands,  or  hundreds  of  thousands,  to  re- 
tain one's  self-estimate,  undiminished,  unmagnified,  unwaver- 
fcg,  is  difficult  indeed.  And  how  many,  even  of  the  power- 
fully-minded, have  failed,  when  popular  applause,  that  sun 
whose  stroke  so  often  is  madness,  has  centered  its  rays  upon 
them.  Edward  Irving  was  no  ordinary  man  ;  yet  he  who,  in 
his  noble  and  beautiful  eulogium  on  this  "freest,  brotherliest, 
bravest  human  soul"  he  ever  met,  bears  witness  to  his  force 
and  healthiness,  tells  us  also  that  he  swallowed  the  intoxicat- 
ing poison  of  fame,  and  had  not  "  force  of  natural  health"  to 
cast  it  out.  Edinburgh  celebrity  contributed  largely  to  the 
ruin  of  Burns  ;  applause,  every  one  knows,  inflated  and  befool- 
ed Rousseau  ;  Byron,  unconscious  perhaps  of  the  fact,  and  in 
words  scornfully  denying  it,  w^as  really  the  slave  of  fame — we 
might  almost  say,  of  mode  ;  and  to  what  length  might  we  not 
extend  the  list '?  We  remember  a  masterly  touch  in  Ovid's 
description  of  Phceton,  and  his  unhappy  ride.  The  chariot  has 
just  reached  the  zenith.  Hitherto  the  aspiring  driver  has 
kept  a  tight  rein,  better  or  worse,  with  fair  success.  But  now 
he  looks  from  his  imperial  station  on  the  vast  round  of  the 
earth ;  its  oceans,  its  forests,  its  mountains,  its  cities,  are  out- 
spread below  him  ;  all  seem  to  gaze  toward  him,  and  drink 
glory  from  his  eye.  He  can  not  endure  it ;  his  brain  reeln, 
his  eye  swims,  the  weight  of  his  office  oppresses  his  individual- 
ity, the  fire- snorting  coursers  drag  the  reins  from  his  relaxing 
hand,  and  tear  away  after  their  own  mad  will.  The  man  who 
can  see  the  world  gazing  at  him  unmoved,  is  the  man  intended 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  439 

by  nature  to  be  gazed  at !  Chalmers  triumphantly  bears  the 
test.  Let  the  world  say  what  it  will,  he  knows  he  is  just 
Chalmers  of  Kilmany,  nothing  more  nor  less — one  whose 
power,  be  it  what  it  may,  neither  inflates  nor  collapses  in  the 
popular  gale.  All  who  approach  him  find  him  simple,  unas- 
suming, devout.  Nay,  his  instinct  of  reality  is  rather  offended 
than  otherwise ;  his  heart  whispers  that  much  of  this  tumult 
is  mere  vocal  vacancy.  As  principalities  and  powers  cluster 
round  him,  he  stands  quiet  and  self-possessed,  unabashed,  un- 
astouished,  unalarmed ;  his  greatness  has  its  source  within. 
No  man  could  more  thoroughly  weigh  popular  acclaim,  and 
more  firmly  pronounce  it  wanting ;  beautiful  ardors  and  rap- 
turous admirations  would  have  been  somewhat  damped  in 
London,  had  his  ultimate  definition  of  such  matters  been, 
by  any  chance  heard — "the  hosannas  of  a  driveling  gener- 
ation !" 

We  must  add  one  other  remark  ere  accompanying  Chal- 
mers back  to  Scotland.  There  was  a  day  when  he  spoke  of 
" literary  distinction"  as  his  "pride  and  consolation;"  there 
was  a  day  when  this  London  notoriety  would  have  appeared 
almost  sublime.  Is  it  unfair  to  suppose  that  the  light  of  that 
Eye  which,  though  invisible,  he  now  seems  ever  to  see  resting 
on  him,  has  shed  an  equalizing  radiance  over  chancellors  and 
peasants,  and  made  sublunary  approbation  a  matter  of  quite 
secondary  moment  ? 

Eeturning  to  Glasgow,  his  popularity  continues  at  the  same 
unprecedented  height  as  before ;  his  study  becomes  a  presence- 
chamber  for  guests  of  all  ranks  and  from  all  quarters.  But 
it  is  never  through  the  general  eye  that  you  can  really  see 
Chalmers ;  it  is  when  you  mark  him  unbosoming  himself,  in 
tender,  artless  affection,  to  his  sister  Jane,  or  warming  the 
tiearts  of  all  around  him  by  his  hearty  geniality  and  rough 


440  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

sagacity,  or  turning  from  the  despised  "  popularity  of  stare, 
and  pressure,  and  animal  heat,"  to  look  for  any  plant  which 
the  Lord  of  the  vineyard  has  honored  him  by  using  his  hand 
in  planting. 

Of  this  last  we  have  an  instance  which  is  too  beautiful  and 
of  too  profound  significance  to  be  omitted ;  he  who  can  not  read 
in  it  the  true  nature  and  the  intrinsic  nobleness  of  Chalmers 
can  interpret  no  biographic  trait  whatever.  A  gentleman 
named  Wright,  an  intimate  acquaintance,  meets  him  one  day 
in  company.  Usually  the  center  of  cheerfulness  and  j)leasure, 
he  is  to-day  downcast  and  heavy.  Mr.  Wright  happening  to 
walk  with  him  on  the  way  home  ventures  to  inquire  whether 
he  is  ill.  He  is  well  enough,  but  must  confess  he  is  not  at 
rest.  His  heart  is  grieved.  "  It  is  a  matter,"  he  says,  "  that 
presses  very  grievously  upon  me.  In  short,  the  truth  is,  I 
have  mistaken  the  way  of  my  duty  to  God,  in  at  all  coming 
to  your  city.  I  am  doing  no  good.  God  has  not  blessed,  and 
is  not  blessing  my  ministry  here. "  He  remembers  Kilmany  and 
its  one  hundred  and  fifty  families ;  he  thinks  how  sure  and  how 
beautiful  the  work  of  God  was  there ;  he  has  exchanged  his  earn- 
est ministrations  from  house  to  house,  for  inevitable  and  perpet- 
ual visits  of  ceremony  or  entertainment,  his  parish  church,  filled 
with  devout  and  humble  hearers,  for  a  mixed  and  staring 
throng,  many  of  whose  members  come  to  see  the  preacher. 
It  is  like  going  from  reality,  which  he  loves  as  his  heart's 
blood,  to  hollowness  and  pretense,  which  he  hates  with  in- 
grained and  immeasurable  hatred.  His  heart  sinks  at  the 
idea  that  in  his  hands  the  work  of  a  Christian  pastor  should 
degenerate  into  emotional  excitement  or  literary  admiration ; 
that  his  portion  is  to  be  mere  earthly  renown,  instead  of  the 
glory  of  having  turned  even  one  to  righteousness.  His  eye 
is  where  a  Christian  pastor's  should  be ;  fame,  adulation,  pop- 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  441 

ularity,  will,  he  knows,  be  shriveled  up  in  the  first  breath  of 
eternity,  A\hile  an  immortal  soul,  saved  by  his  means,  will  bo 
a  gem  in  a  crown  eternally  brightening.  In  friendly  simplicity 
and  greatness  of  heart,  seeking  the  relief  which  every  noble 
nature  finds  in  sympathy,  he  reveals  his  sorrow  to  his  friend. 
And  lo  !  he  finds  in  his  answer  a  solace  which  he  little  expects. 
Mr.  Wright  details  to  him  a  case  in  which  he  knows  the  min- 
istry of  Chalmers  to  have  been  effectual  in  rousing  a  soul  to 
deep  personal  godliness,  in  making  it  flee  to  Christ  for  salva- 
tion. "  Ah,"  exclaims  his  delighted  and  grateful  listener,  "  ah, 
Mr.  Wright,  what  blessed,  what  comforting  news  you  give 
me ;  for  really  I  was  beginning  to  fail,  from  an  apprehension 
that  I  had  not  been  acting  according  to  the  will  of  God  in 
coming  to  your  city." 

We  have  still,  however,  to  contemplate  Chalmers  in  his 
principal  aspect  as  a  force  and  influence  among  men.  That 
which,  in  our  estimation,  gives  to  his  career  its  highest  grandeur, 
and  ranks  him  with  the  great  ones  of  time,  is  the  tremendous 
power  with  which  he  grasped  one  vast  idea :  the  idea  of  Chris- 
tianity in  application  to  national  existence,  of  the  Christianiza- 
tion  of  the  state.  To  use  his  own  magnificent  words,  the  aim 
of  his  life  was  to  nurse  the  empire  to  Christianity.  It  is  fine 
to  see,  as  it  were,  his  great  heart  throbbing  with  this  sublime 
conception ;  to  mark  how  his  enthusiasm  always  gushes  out 
afresh  as  it  comes  before  him ;  to  listen  to  the  incidental  tones 
of  lyric  rapture  which  break  from  his  lips,  when  the  light  of 
the  mighty  thought,  as  of  the  coming  Christian  morning,  strikes 
along  his  brow.  This  is  the  idea  which  makes  the  life  of 
Chalmers  epic.  The  nineteenth  century  is  marked  by  the  tri- 
umphant march  of  science  on  the  one  hand,  and  by  the  awaken- 
ing of  the  peoples  on  the  other.  Banners  innumerable  have 
been  unfolded  as  banners  of  national  salvation;  there  has  been 
19* 


442  THOMAS    CHALMERS. 

the  cloudy  ensign  tf  transcendentalism ;  there  has  been  the 
standard  of  mere  science  and  political  philosophy,  with  its 
meager  diagrams  and  cold  metallic  luster ;  there  has  been  the 
black  flag  of  atheism  ;  Chalmers,  with  the  gait  of  a  champion, 
stepped  forward  with  the  ancient  banner,  the  old  legend  still 
Iburning  on  its  massive  folds  as  in  letters  of  golden  fire,  "  In 
Christ  conquer  !"  Eound  that  banner,  in  the  age  of  science 
and  democracy,  he  called  us  to  rally,  and  told  how  the  fight 
would  go. 

But  it  was  not  only  the  dauntless  valor  and  tireless  perse- 
verance with  which  he  proclaimed  that  Christianity  alone  can 
save  the  nations,  which  distinguished  him.  These  might  have 
characterized  a  very  inferior  naan.  It  was  his  clear  percep- 
tion of  the  position  in  which  Christianity  now  stands  to  peoples, 
it  was  his  essential  agreement  in  the  axioms  on  which  he  pro- 
ceeded, with  the  soundest  and  greatest  intellects  of  this  and 
all  ages,  it  was  his  statesmanlike  comprehension  of  the  main 
outlines  of  the  method  by  which  Christianity  is  to  be  applied 
to  national  life,  that  stamped  him  as  the  highest  practical 
Christian  thinker  of  his  age.  Of  an  intellectual  pov;er  which 
enabled  him  to  sum  and  master  the  lessons  science  has  taught, 
and  the  means  science  has  provided,  for  the  amelioration  of 
the  community,  he  was  able  to  discern  what  was  the  place 
Christianity  was  to  occupy  in  relation  to  these.  Agreeing 
with  all  the  master  intellects  among  men,  that  it  is  only  by 
the  inspiration  of  moral  life  into  a  nation  that  its  physical  life 
can  prosper,  and  differing  from  Mr.  Carlyle  only  in  that  he 
deemed  the  one  source  of  moral  life  a  personal  God,  and  the 
grand  instrument  of  moral  life  the  religion  of  Jesus,  he  yet  did 
not  turn  with  contemptuous  indignation  from  the  advocates  of 
special  scientific  methods ;  he  took  the  different  plan  of  sup- 
plementing their  deficiency,  of  speaking   the  truth  without 


THOMAS     tJHALMERS.  443 

"which  their  systems  were  dead.  He  did  not,  with  indignant 
stamp  of  his  foot,  shake  to  pieces  as  worthless  the  mechanism 
of  science;  he  said  it  was  an  invaluable,  an  indispensable 
mechanism  ;  but  he  braaght  a  coal  kindled  in  heaven  to  put  it 
in  motion,  to  inspire  it  with  life,  and  spread  over  it  a  new  and 
glorious  light.  In  language  of  glowing  poetry,  he  represents 
Christianity  visiting  earth  from  the  celestial  realms,  her  first 
and  all-embracing  object  to  bring  to  men  treasures  of  immortal 
joy,  yet,  by  a  sublime  necessity,  scattering  beatitude  in  the 
paths  of  mortal  life.  With  the  ancient  heroic  devotion,  he 
toiled  for  the  realization  of  his  idea ;  no  old  crusader  or  me- 
diaeval king  strove  more  valiantly  in  faith  or  in  patriotism, 
than  he  to  be  the  Christian  divine  demanded  by  the  nineteenth 
century.  If  it  is  the  harmonizing,  concentrating  might  of  one 
great  idea  pervading  a  character  and  life,  which  are  recognized 
as  imparting  to  these  an  epic  greatness,  surely  we  can  affirm 
such  of  the  life  and  character  of  Chalmers. 

Descending  to  the  practical  application  of  his  one  life-effort, 
we  find  that  it  admits  of  easy  and  clear  definition.  With  the 
glance  of  one  who  sees  before  and  after,  far  along  the  centu- 
ries past  and  future,  his  high  aim  was,  by  one  gigantic  im- 
pulse, to  raise  the  Church  of  his  country  to  what  the  nation 
and  the  age  required.  Town  and  country  he  would  divide 
into  manageable  parishes  ;  the  Presbyterian  mechanism  of  the 
kirk  session  he  would  bring  to  bear  with  its  innate  power  and 
intimacy ;  over  all  would  preside  a  set  of  godly  and  energetic 
pastors,  who  would  superintend  and  vitalize  the  whole.  Thus, 
in  a  thousand  streams,  the  very  water  of  life  would  circulate 
through  the  veins  of  the  nation.  A  personal  intimacy  and 
friendship  would  bind  pastor  to  peasant,  rank  to  rank;  "the 
golden  cliain  of  life"  would  be  unbroken,  and  it  would  be  none 
the  less  beautiful,  binding,  or  pleasant,  that  it  was  anchored 


444  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

withii  the  vail.  Over  the  land  there  would  pass  the  hreath 
of  a  moral  renovation ;  every  other  renovation  would  follow 
in  benign  and  natural  sequence  ;  it  would  look  to  heaven  with 
one  broad  smile  of  peace  and  contentment,  like  the  face  of  a 
strong  man  awakening  to  health  after  long  sickness. 

His  method  of  carrying  out  his  plans  in  his  own  parish,  the 
example  he  offered  to  the  pastors  of  Scotland  and  the  worl 
of  their  efficacy,  was  perhaps  the  most  triumphant  portion  of 
his  whole  acting  in  the  matter.  Here  it  is  important  to  note 
him  ;  new  discoveries  of  his  intellectual  energy  and  his  moral 
worth  dawn  on  us  at  every  step.  We  saw  formerly  that,  in 
the  meeting  of  all  the  winds  of  fame,  he  could  preserve  unflut- 
tered  his  self-estimate,  and  work  as  calmly  as  in  quiet  Kil- 
many.  He  could  stand  alone.  We  learn  now  that  he  can 
draw  others  around  him,  work  with  them,  and  teach  them  to 
work.  Here  it  is  that  the  true  kingly  talent  comes  out.  He 
knows  the  genuine  worker,  he  attracts  him  toward  himself,  he 
strikes  into  him  new  fire ;  he  can  light  a  sympathetic  flame  in 
the  bosom  of  each  with  whom  he  acts,  so  that  he  becomes 
a  miniature  of  himself.  Every  thing  yields  to  his  contagious 
energy  ;  the  very  Town  Council  of  Glasgow  assent  to  his 
views ;  his  subordinates  follow  him  as  the  carriages  follow  the 
steam-engine.  Chancellors  and  duchesses,  and  the  tumult  of 
crowds  encircling  Chalmers,  might  be  gadflies  round  a  mere 
gaudy  sunflower :  but  we  can  not  be  deceived  here.  Look 
upon  him  in  the  heart  of  Glasgow,  as  he  dives  into  noisome 
kennels,  or  feels  his  way  up  dark  winding  stairs,  seeking  out 
destitution,  seeing  the  fact  in  its  own  nakedness,  looking  his 
foe  in  the  face,  and  bringing  to  smite  it  that  one  weapon  he 
bears,  the  sword  of  the  Spirit.  Then  you  see  Chalmers.  And 
his  great  experiment  prevails :  Christianity,  with  Chalmers  and 
the  kirk  session  he  directs  as  its  instruments,  is  found  to  meet 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  445 

every  social  want  in  the  populous  and  difficult  parish  of  St. 
John's. 

It  is  well  known  that  Chalmers  was  during  his  whole  life  an 
implacable  enemy  of  the  English  poor-law.  We  are  com- 
pelled to  omit  a  detailed  review  of  his  opinions  and  projects  in 
connection  with  the  subject ;  but  we  shall  be  able,  in  narrow 
compass,  to  exhibit  the  fundamental  principle  on  which  he  pro- 
ceeded, and  the  method  in  which  he  believed  it  possible,  by 
the  aid  of  vital  Christianity  to  dispense  altogether  with  such 
an  institution. 

In  his  fundamental  proposition,  That  a  poor-law  endangered 
the  feeling  of  independence,  and  consequently  the  morality  of 
a  people,  by  converting  the  petition  for  an  alms  into  the  de- 
mand of  a  right,  he  has  been  agreed  with  by  men  of  the  most 
directly  opposed  character  and  opinions,  and  of  the  highest 
intellectual  powers.  The  acknowledged  master  in  the  schools 
of  political  economy,  David  Ricardo,  records  his  emphatic 
opinion  to  this  effect;  his  shrewd  and  cool-headed  disciple, 
M'Culloch,  pronounces  the  poor-laws  "  essentially  injurious" — 
an  opinion,  by  the  way,  which  renders  to  us  absolutely  aston- 
ishing his  estimate  of  the  efforts  made  by  Chalmers  against 
them.  At  the  distance  of  a  hemisphere,  both  in  thought  and 
sentiment,  from  these  men — they,  as  it  were,  in  polar  cold  and 
bareness,  he  in  tropic  thunder  and  luxuriance — Mr.  Carlyle 
has  expressed  the  same  opinion.  Whether  these  authors  have 
been  quite  correct  or  no,  we  say  not ;  Dr.  Alison  adduces  a 
fact  or  two  which  tell  strangely  in  an  opposite  direction  ;  what 
we  wish  to  be  noted  is,  that  Chalmers  here  stood  by  no  means 
alone,  that  his  belief  on  the  point  has  been  treated  as  an  axiom 
by  such  thinkers  as  Ricardo  and  Carlyle.  He  declared  that 
the  only  sound  and  safe  method  was  that  of  nature ;  and  he 
pronounced  Christianity  able  to  hold  up  the  hands  of  nature, 


446  THOMAS    CHALMERS. 

and  strengthen  her  to  attain  the  desired  end  in  her  own  fair 
and  salutary  manner.  To  the  argument,  that  the  support  of 
the  poor,  if  left  to  voluntary  effort,  would  fall  entirely  on  the 
benevolent  few,  he  replied,  that,  if  things  were  properly 
managed,  every  parish  would  be  able,  without  strain  or  incon- 
venience, to  support  its  own  poor  ;  he  might  have  added  (per- 
haps, though  we  do  not  remember  meeting  the  remark  in  his 
writings,  he  has  added),  that  Christianity  makes  it  a  privilege 
to  stretch  out  the  hand  of  charity,  and  that  this  act  of  the  be- 
nevolent may  be  intended  as  a  continual  rebuke  of  the  world's 
selfishness  and  protest  against  it.  To  the  assertion  that  benev- 
olence could  not  be  depended  upon,  he  replied,  that  he  trusted 
to  no  fortuitous  impulse,  but  to  known  principles  of  human 
nature,  the  desire  to  rise,  the  sympathy  of  friends,  and  the  un- 
failing bounty  of  at  least  a  chosen  few.  The  machinery  he 
provided  is  thus  described  in  his  own  words : — "  We  divided 
the  parish  into  twenty-five  parts ;  and,  having  succeeded  in  ob- 
taining as  many  deacons,  we  assigned  one  part  to  each — thus 
placing  under  his  management  toward  fifty  families,  or  at  an 
average  about  four  hundred  of  a  gross  population.  We  con- 
structed also  a  familiar  or  brief  directory,  wdiich  we  put  into 
their  hands.  It  laid  down  the  procedure  which  should  be  ob- 
served on  every  application  that  was  made  for  relief.  It  was 
our  perfect  determination  that  every  applicant  of  ours  should 
be  at  least  as  well  off  as  he  would  have  been  in  any  other 
parish  of  Glasgow,  had  his  circumstances  there  been  as  well 
known — so  that,  surrounded  though  we  were  by  hostile  and 
vigilant  observers,  no  case  of  scandalous  allowance,  or  still 
less  of  scandalous  neglect,  was  ever  made  out  against  us.  The 
only  distinction  between  us  and  our  neighbors  lay  in  this — 
that  these  circumstances  were  by  us  most  thoroughly  scrutin- 
ized, and  that  with  the  view  of  being  thoroughly  ascertained — 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  44*7 

and  tliat  very  generally,  in  the  progress  of  the  investigation, 
we  came  in  sight  of  opportunities  or  openings  for  some  one  or 
other  of  those  preventive  expedients  by  which  any  act  of 
public  charity  was  made  all  the  less  necessary,  or  very  often 
superseded  altogether."  Here  there  is  really  nothing  Utopian ; 
rather  is  there  a  deliberate  and  accurate  calculation  of  means, 
measuring  of  resistance,  and  mastering  of  details.  With  so 
many  inspectors,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  destitution  could  be 
overlooked ;  with  so  many  to  scrutinize  and  investigate,  it  can 
hardly  be  conceived  that  any  natural  channel  of  relief,  by  the 
obtaining  of  work  or  of  assistance  from  relatives,  could  be  un- 
noticed ;  with  so  many  to  inform  and  appeal,  it  would  be  no 
easy  matter  for  benevolence  to  fall  asleep.  And  then,  as  we 
have  said,  he  proved  it ;  amid  difficulty,  obstruction,  and  with- 
out putting  out  all  his  force,  he  succeeded  to  the  full ;  every 
objection  and  sneer  was  at  last  silenced,  save  one. 

And  if  all  men  despaired  of  the  power  of  Christianity  to 
heal  and  beautify  the  nation,  was  it  not  right,  and  noble,  and 
valiant,  that  Chalmers  should  not  do  so  ?  His  belief  was  no 
empty  sound,  no  half-hypocrisy.  The  religion  of  Jesus,  he 
said,  has  all  its  ancient  power ;  for  the  mechanic  dispensings 
of  a  great  lifeless  reservoir,  walled  in  by  the  state,  it  can  give 
the  sweet  watering  of  nature's  gentle  rain ;  where  Law  can 
but  order  relief  with  her  iron  tongue,  it  can  set  Pity  by  the 
bed  of  national  weakness,  to  hallow  the  ministries  of  Mercy 
by  their  own  native  smile.  There  was  a  great  fund  of  hope 
and  valor  in  his  breast ;  he  would  not  despair  of  the  common- 
wealth ;  he  would  not  sit  slothfully  down  in  what  was  at  best 
a  mere  negation  of  evil,  and  whose  occupancy  deferred  the 
really  good.  The  w^orst  you  can  say  of  him  here,  is  actually 
and  without  paradox  the  best  which  could  be  said ;  for  it  is 
that  which  is  to  be  said  of  all  the  noblest  of  the  sons  of  men, 


448  THOMAS    CHALMERS. 

and  whicli  is  the  crown  of  their  nobleness  ;  namely,  that  they 
looked  forward  to  a  brightened  future,  as  that  in  which  it  would 
be  good,  and,  as  it  were,  natural,  for  them  to  live  and  expatiate, 
that  they  seemed  to  be  messengers  sent  before  to  herald  a  be-t- 
ter  time,  and  that  the  mode  in  which  they  delivered  their  un- 
conscious prophecy  was  a  summons,  burning  with  earnestness 
and  hope,  to  all  men  to  arise  and  inaugurate  the  new  era  now. 
Chalmers  could  not  find  his  rest  in 

"The  round 
Of  smooth  and  solemnized  complacencies, 
By  which,  in  Christian  lands,  from  age  to  age, 
Profession  mocks  performance." 

He  dared  the  original  attempt  to  infuse  the  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity, like  vital  sap,  into  the  national  frame,  he  aspired  to 
shake  off  from  the  Christian  peoples  that  mournful  sleep — of 
custom,  of  routine,  of  worldliness — which  has  ever,  with  grad- 
ual, but  hitherto  irresistible  influence,  closed  the  national  eye, 
that  seemed  erewhile  to  be  opened  wide  and  kindled  with  em- 
pyreal fire.  This  is  the  heroic  aspect  of  his  life ;  his  endless 
battle  against  mere  respectability  and  commonplace;  his 
valiant  and  life-long  endeavor  to  set  Christianity  on  the  throne 
and  in  the  heart  of  the  nation.  He  is  the  modern  Christian ; 
shutting  his  eye  to  nothing,  acquainted  with  every  cotemporary 
agency,  but  declaring  that  Christianity  is  still  able  to  marshal 
every  force,  and  meet  every  requirement  in  social  existence. 
And  we  need  not  say  that  he  here  pointed  the  way  in  all 
reform  which  can  be  regarded  with  perfect  satisfaction  and 
unfaltering  hope;  if  he  failed,  we  must  just  laise  the  same 
banner,  and,  with  somewhat  of  his  ardor,  still  calmly  and 
dauntlessly  exclaim.  Excelsior :  the  life  of  Chalrjiers  was  a 
proclamation  of  the  world's  last  hope. 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  449 

And  in  at  least  the  special  forms  in  which  he  himself  had 
striven  to  reanimate  the  nation  with  Christian  life,  he  did  fail. 
For  long  years  he  traveled,  and  wrote,  and  argued  for  church 
extension ;  year  after  year,  he  looked  to  every  quarter  of  the 
heavens,  if  perchance  a  gleam  of  hope  against  pauperism  might 
cheer  his  eye.  But  the  day  of  his  life  drew  on  to  a  close,  and 
the  work  was  yet  to  do.  Then  he  withdrew  into  his  closet,  and 
in  silent  heaviness  of  heart  penned  the  following  words ;  we 
find  them  in  Dr.  Hanna's  last  volume : — 

"  Sabbath^  December  12,  1841. — The  passage  respecting 
Babel  should  not  be  without  an  humble  and  wholesome  effect 
upon  my  spirit.  I  have  been  set  on  the  erection  of  my  Babel 
— on  the  establishment  of  at  least  two  great  objects,  which, 
however  right  in  themselves,  become  the  mere  objects  of  a  fond 
and  proud  imagination,  in  as  far  as  they  are  not  prosecuted  with 
a  feeling  of  dependence  upon  God,  and  a  supreme  desire  after 
his  glory.  These  two  objects  are,  the  deliverance  of  our  em- 
pire from  pauperism,  and  the  establishment  of  an  adequate 
machinery  for  the  Christian  and  general  instruction  of  our 
whole  population.  I  am  sure  that,  in  the  advancement  of 
these,  I  have  not  taken  God  enough  along  with  me,  and  trusted 
more  to  my  own  arguments  and  combinations  among  my  fel- 
lows, than  to  prayers.  There  has  been  no  confounding  of 
tongues  to  prevent  a  common  understanding,  so  indispensable 
to  that  co-operation,  without  which  there  can  be  no  success, 
but  without  this  miracle  my  views  have  been  marvelously  im- 
peded by  a  diversity  of  opinions,  as  great  as  if  it  had  been 
brought  on  by  a  diversity  of  language.  The  barriers  in  the 
way  of  access  to  other  men's  minds  have  been  as  obstinate  and 
unyielding  as  if  I  had  spoken  to  them  in  foreign  speech ;  and, 
though  I  can  not  resign  my  convictions,  I  must  now — and 
surely  it  is  good  to  be  so  taught — I  must  now,  under  the  ex- 


450  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

perimental  sense  of  my  own  helplessness,  acknowledge,  with 
all  humility,  yet  with  hope,  in  the  efficacy  of  a  blessing  from 
on  high  still  in  reserve  for  the  day  of  God's  own  appointed 
time,  that  except '  the  Lord  build  the  house,  the  builders  build 
in  vain.'  " 

The  spectacle  of  Chalmers,  as  he  pens  these  lines,  is  assuredly 
the  most  sublime  afforded  by  his  life.  The  very  health  and 
tenderness  of  childhood  are  in  the  heart  of  the  old  warrior 
he  brings  his  sword,  and  lays  it  down  at  eventide,  willing,  even 
with  tears,  to  acknowledge  that  it  is  because  of  the  weakness 
of  his  arm,  and  the  faithlessness  of  his  heart,  that  the  enemy 
has  not  been  vanquished.  The  light  in  the  face  of  Arnold,  too, 
we  found  to  shine  more  brightly  as  he  was  about  to  enter  the 
valley  of  death. 

Of  the  causes  of  this  ultimate  failure,  which,  however,  might 
be  a  failure  more  in  appearance  than  reality,  it  is  unnecessary 
to  say  much. 

If  there  was  any  great  supplement  to  be  made  to  the  general 
system  of  Chalmers's  thought  and  opinion,  it  was  an  adequate 
sense,  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  difficulty  of  his  enterprise,  and, 
on  the  other,  of  the  chief  and  indispensable  means  by  which  it 
could  be  accomplished :  on  the  one  hand  of  the  impotence  of 
machinery,  and  on  the  other  of  the  extreme  rarity  and  ines- 
timable worth  of  true  and  mighty  men.  It  is  an  invisible 
force  that  is  wanted  rather  than  wheel- work ;  the  latter  will  be 
provided  with  comparative  ease ;  the  most  elaborate  machinery, 
without  this  living  force,  may  hang  vacant  in  the  winds,  like  a 
rattling  skeleton  where  once  was  the  throb  of  life  and  the  flush 
of  health.  The  Church-state  of  Arnold — king  and  senators 
teaching  wisdom  and  doing  the  bidding  of  God,  the  powers  of 
evil  aghast  at  the  new  vision  of  Christian  unity  and  love — the 
manageable  parishes,  and  country  studded  wif  h  churches,  of 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  461 

Chalmers : — alas !  we  must  cast  a  questioning,  or  at  least  a 
warning  glanco  toward  all  such  schemes.  The  universal 
Church,  that  looks  so  fair  in  the  distance,  of  which  all  the  for- 
merly separate  churches  are  but  pillars,  all  within  whose  walls 
are  true  Christians,  all  without  whose  walls  are  Pagans ;  can 
we  look  long  at  the  imposing  structure  without  seeing,  as  if 
emerging  from  beneath  its  crumbling  battlements,  a  great 
whited  sepulchre,  uniform — as  death  1  A  country  filled  with 
clergymen,  a  church  in  every  street,  a  parish  in  every  valley  : — 
must  we  not  here  also  proclaim  that  danger  impends  ?  In  our 
cross-grained  world,  every  good  thing  has  a  counterfeit  which 
is  doubly  evil :  self-respect,  recognized  as  indispensable  to 
completeness  of  character,  is  aped  by  impudence  and  conceit ; 
politeness,  one  of  nature's  fairest  and  costliest  flowers,  which 
can  grow  only  in  a  rich  and  kindly  soil,  is  mimicked  by  eti- 
quette, a  very  gum-flower ;  sanctity,  the  attribute  of  the  sons 
of  the  morning,  may,  by  human  eyes,  be  confounded  with 
sanctimoniousness  spurned  of  devils.  And  it  is  a  well-known 
law,  that  the  nobler  the  thing  is,  the  baser  is  its  counterfeit. 
A  hypocritic  smile,  a  traitorous  kiss,  are  far  worse  than  a  scowl 
of  honest  hate  or  a  stab  of  open  vengeance.  If,  then,  as  we 
assuredly  believe,  a  godly  minister  is  an  angel  of  light,  a  god- 
less pastor  is  a  very  angel  of  darkness.  Between  the  real 
Christian  pastor,  whose  worth  can  not  be  summed,  and  the  in- 
dolent, greedy,  black-coated  lounger,  who  burdens  with  his 
maintenance,  and  blights  by  his  example,  who  is  a  continual 
living  profanation  of  what  is  holiest,  there  is  but  an  invisible 
difference.  Get  your  men,  and  all '  is  got.  A  Brainerd  finds 
himself  a  congregation  among  North  American  Indians,  a 
Schwartz  among  the  swamps  and  fevers  of  the  Carnatic,  but 
churches  will  not  by  any  natural  necessity  attract  ministers. 
This  immovable  fact  we  must  always  take  along  with  us. 


452  THOMAS    CHALMERS. 

Chalmers,  no  doubt,  knew  it,  and  it  will  ultimately,  as  seems 
probable,  be  found  that  it  was  by  acting  on  individual  men 
over  the  country  that  his  influence  was  most  powerful :  but  he 
did  not  grasp  it  in  all  its  mighty  import,  and  make  it  con- 
sciously and  avowedly  the  basis  of  his  operations:  one  man 
alone  has  proclaimed  this  doctrine  in  all  the  emphasis  which  is 
its  due — Thomas  Carlyle.  Ah !  what  a  prospect  might  we 
have  had  now,  had  Carlyle  and  Chalmers  toiled  side  by  side  in 
the  Church  of  Scotland.  Let  us  not,  however,  deem  that  we 
shall  be  sinless,  if  we  neglect  the  truth  to  which  the  former  has 
called  our  attention. 

After  four  years'  incumbency  in  the  parish  of  St.  John's, 
Chalmers  removed,  in  November,  1823,  to  St.  Andrews,  to  fill 
the  chair  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  university  there.  His 
main  reason  for  quitting  Glasgow  deserves  notice.  His  experi- 
ment in  the  parish  of  St.  John's  silenced,  as  we  said,  all  ob- 
jections but  one.  This  one  was  the  determined  assertion  that 
the  whole  success  was  due  to  the  eloquence  and  energy,  in 
one  word,  to  the  individual  character  of  Chalmers.  It  is  fine 
to  see  how  this  galls  him.  He  exclaims  against  the  "  nauseous 
eulogies"  which  would  turn  into  an  empty  compliment  to  him 
the  demonstration  of  the  power  of  Christianity.  But  it  is  vain 
to  argue :  the  one  reply  they  make  to  every  appeal  is,  St. 
John's  parish  is  worked  by  Chalmers.  What  can  be  done  ? 
The  following  are  his  own  words : — "  There  was  obviously  no 
method  by  which  to  disabuse  them  of  this  strange  impression, 
but  by  turning  my  back  on  the  whole  concern ;  and  thus  test- 
ing the  inherent  soundness  and  efficacy  of  the  system,  by  leav- 
ing it  in  other  hands."  And  so  he  goes  lo  St.  Andrews ;  let 
the  cause  prosper  whatever  may  become  of  him  !  Like  him- 
self again. 

In  1828,  he  is  inaugurated  as  Professor  of  Divinity  in  the 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  453 

University  of  Edinburgh,  an  ofiicc  he  continues  to  fill  until 
within  a  few  years  of  his  death.  Over  his  students  he  exer- 
cises the  same  powerful  and  benign  influence  which  he  has 
shed  an  all  who  have  come  within  his  sphere.  His  prelec- 
tions tend  to  produce  godly  and  ardent  pastors,  rather  than 
nice  controversialists ;  he  is,  though  not  so  named,  the  greatest 
among  professors  of  Pastoral  Theology;  his  spirit  goes  over 
Scotland  incarnated  in  young,  vigorous,  aggressive  Christian 
ministers. 

We  now  approach  that  epoch  in  the  life  of  Chalmers,  during 
which,  for  the  last  time,  he  w^as  to  act  a  great  and  prominent 
part  before  the  eyes  of  men.  Within  the  circle  of  his  sympa- 
thies and  the  ken  of  his  powers,  he  had  embraced  all  the  lead- 
ing interests  of  the  empire ;  with  a  gigantic  and  hallowed  en- 
ergy, he  had  striven  to  reanimate  them  by  an  inspiration  of 
divine  fire.  And  with  a  certain  hopefulness,  which,  though 
damped  by  opposition,  could  not  altogether  die,  he  had  ever 
looked  to  the  provisions  and  mechanism  of  that  Scottish  Church 
which  he  loved  with  the  double  affection  of  patriotism  and 
pride.  Whether  it  came  of  the  substantial  and  practical  na- 
ture of  his  intellect,  or  whether  it  arose  from  his  deep  loyalty 
and  conservative  tendencies,  we  shall  not  say,  but  the  fact  is 
certain,  that  he  was  a  decided  and  inflexible  advocate  of  re- 
ligious establishments.  But,  with  the  view^s  of  a  statesman, 
he  was  also  a  divine.  Never  for  a  moment  did  he  conceive 
the  unchristian  idea  that  it  was  State  support  which  gave 
existence  to  a  Church.  The  doctrine  of  the  distinct  existence 
of  the  Church  of  Christ  he  grasped  with  all  the  firmness  of  his 
strong  powers,  and  discerned  with  all  their  clearness :  what- 
ever his  faith  in  the  eflicacy  of  Christianity,  it  was  in  a  Chris- 
tianity not  the  bondslave  of  man  but  the  messenger  of  God. 

It  is,  of  course,  unnecessary  for  us  either  to  detail  the  va- 


454  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

rious  stages  of  the  controversy  which  preceded  the  celebrated 
Disruption  of  1843  in  the  Scottish  National  Church,  or  to  de- 
fine, with  precision  and  in  detail,  the  argumentative  positions 
taken  by  the  respective  parties.  It  were,  however,  unpardon- 
able, altogether  to  shun  the  question.  Chalmers  acted  a  part 
therein  too  prominent  to  render  this  permissible ;  while  the 
movement  itself  bears  closely  on  one  of  the  main  general 
objects  of  our  little  work,  the  ascertainment  of  the  actual 
power  and  practical  availability  of  what  names  itself  Christian 
principle  in  our  age.  We  shall  endeavor  to  eliminate,  from 
the  outline  we  purpose  giving  of  the  question  at  issue,  all 
merely  local  reference  and  detail,  seeking  some  truth  of  uni- 
versal and  important  application.  We  shall  avoid,  also,  almost 
entirely,  the  discussion  of  the  exegetical  arguments  on  either 
side :  not  that  the  testimony  of  Scripture  is  not  final  and  absolute 
on  the  point,  but  that  the  perfect  reasonableness  of  what  we 
deem  the  truth  in  the  matter  will,  if  well  established,  render  the 
simple  deliverance  of  Scripture  at  once  intelligible,  express, 
and  beyond  reach  of  cavil.  If  we  in  any  measure  succceed 
in  our  object,  we  shall  aim  blows  at  certain  of  the  most  bane- 
ful, and,  we  fear,  widespread  errors  which  endanger  religion 
in  our  day. 

To  speak  in  a  way  perhaps  somewhat  pedantic,  but  which 
is  the  only  way  we  can  see  to  express  concisely  our  meaning, 
we  have  to  discover,  as  the  essential  points  of  the  matter  before 
us,  the  idea  of  a  State,  the  idea  of  a  Church,  and  the  relation 
between  the  two  ;  wherein  each  of  these — the  state,  the  church, 
and  the  relation — essentially  consists.  ' 

We  shall  encumber  ourselves  with  no  preliminary  discus- 
sion of  the  question,  What  is  the  final  end  at  once  of  State 
and  Church  ?  We  lay  it  down  as  the  fundamental  axiom  of 
the  whole  discussion,  that  the  glory  of  God  is  the  end  and  in 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  455 

tent  of  each.  We  hold  that  the  arguments  adducible  hy 
reason  to  prove  that  the  end  of  individual  existence  is  God's 
glory,  can  he  brought,  perhaps  without  exception,  to  prove 
the  same  fact  in  the  case  of  governments.  But  let  no  rash 
conclusions  be  drawn  from  this  all-important  declaration. 
Every  man  works  for  God's  glory  when  he  performs  the  pe- 
culiar task  assigned  him  by  God ;  it  may  be  implied  in  his 
thorough  discharge  of  this  task,  that  he  abstain  from  all  other 
efforts  and  functions,  however  plausibly  he  may  be  invited 
thereto :  and  the  remark  applies  equally  to  all  beneath  the 
government  of  God. 

This  axiom  laid  do^vn,  we  have  to  take  but  one  step,  when 
the  whole  matter  clears  up  before  us.  Man's  nature,  indi- 
vidual and  social,  is  twofold,  spiritual  and  physical.  That  he 
has  a  physical  nature,  that  he  is  a  denizen  of  earth,  and  has  to 
work  that  he  may  live,  we  need  adduce  no  argument  to  show. 
That  his  nature,  also  is  spiritual,  that,  as  a  spirit,  he  is  con- 
nected with  a  system  of  things  not  terrestrial  but  celestial, 
not  temporal  but  eternal,  is  attested  by  reason.  Here,  too, 
nothing  more  is  strictly  necessary,  than  a  simple  statement  of 
the  fact. 

Now  we  hold  it  a  defaiition  of  Church  and  State  perfectly 
adequate  for  our  purposes,  which  declares  the  former  to  be  a 
union  among  men,  considered  as  spiritual  beings,  and  for 
spiritual  ends,  and  the  latter  a  union  for  objects  of  a  strictly 
terrestrial  nature.  Let  it  be  remarked  here,  first,  that  we 
look  at  both  Church  and  State  with  the  eye  of  reason ;  and, 
second,  that  we  thus  define  a  State  not  in  its  relation  to  other 
States,  but  with  reference  to  its  own  members. 

Has  God  appointed  to  the  church  and  state,  thus  defined, 
respective  duties  ?  We  think  He  has ;  and  shall  endeavor 
briefly  to  discriminate  their  functions. 


456  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

The  function  of  a  State,  viewed  in  the  relation  indicated 
above,  is  confined  to  terrestrial  matters.  A  government  is,  as 
it  were,  God's  commissioner  to  see  that  the  national  farm  be 
thoroughly  tilled.  If  this  can  be  shown  to  be  work  sufficient 
and  separable,  our  point  will  be  half  proved.  The  State's  ob- 
ject is  to  render  itself  safe  from  without,  and,  to  express  all 
in  one  word,  prosperous  within.  We  shall  not  say  that  this 
exhausts  its  duty  in  relation  to  other  States ;  we  speak  of  its 
duties  toward  itself.  And  for  the  attainment  of  this  object, 
what  is  necessary  ?  It  is  needful,  in  one  word,  that  the  national 
virtues  flourish.  For  safety,  it  is  requisite  that  the  people  be 
courageous,  sober,  observant  of  an  oath  ;  for  prosperity,  it  is 
necessary  that  they  be  industrious,  so  that  the  nation  collect- 
ively may  derive  the  greatest  possible  benefit  from  its  soil, 
climate,  and  mineral  wealth,  and  that  they  be  commercially 
upright,  so  that  the  rights  of  all  may  be  balanced,  and  the 
general  welfare  subserved.  A  government  prevents  internally 
every  form  o^ aggression  by  man  on  man;  this  last  is  the  pre- 
cise, scientific  definition  of  crime  in  a  nation.  It  is  a  fact  that 
there  is  a  morality  whose  exclusive  theater  is  earth  ;  there  is 
an  integrity  between  man  and  man  which  supports  commerce, 
a  national  steadfastness  and  industry  which  avert  revolution, 
a  loyalty,  a  patriotism,  a  valor,  which  girdle  the  state  as 
with  bayonets.  And  surely  these — and  we  have  nowise  ex- 
hausted the  list — constitute  work  sufficient  for  any  body  cor- 
porate. 

There  are  men,  and  in  our  day  they  are  numerous,  we  fear 
beyond  precedent,  who  consider  such  achievements  as  we  have 
glanced  at  above,  and  the  general  morality  we  have  indicated, 
to  be  all  which  can  concern  men  and  nations.  Atheistic 
morals  are  by  nature  and  necessity  confined  to  such.  A  man 
might  remain  immaculate,  on  the  system  of  D'Holbach,  or 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  45*7 

Godwin,  or  Cointo,  though  he  had  never  believed  in  or  heard 
of  a  God.  In  all  such  systems,  man's  whole  duties  are  his 
duties  to  man. 

But,  if  we  believe  that  man  is  even  now  the  denizen  of  a 
higher  world  than  that  of  sense,  if  we  attribute  reality  to  a 
spiritual  province  of  things,  a  morality  and  a  government  dif- 
ferent from  these  are  seen,  in  natural  and  inevitable  sequence, 
to  emerge.  This  is  celestial  morality  :  and  the  body  corpo- 
rate which  bears  the  same  relation  to  it  that  secular  govern- 
ment bears  to  secular  morality,  is  the  Church.  All  that  a 
brother  man  is  empowered  to  demand  of  another  is,  that  he 
give  him  free  and  fliir  play  for  all  his  faculties,  that  he  harm 
him  not ;  God  may  demand  of  a  man  that  he  be  holy  in 
thought,  heart,  and  action  ;  terrestrial  morality  may  be  called 
harmlessness ;  celestial,  holiness.  To  profane  the  name  of 
God  may  imply  no  harm  to  a  fellow-man,  but  it  may  be  an 
infraction  of  man's  duty  to  God.  The  devotion  of  a  certain 
time  to  the  worship  of  God,  may  or  may  not  be  of  direct  and 
obvious  advantage  to  the  community,  but  it  may  be  required 
by  God.  In  short,  there  may  be  a  surveillance  of  man  as  a 
denizen  of  the  spiritual  world,  as  well  as  a  surveillance  of  him 
as  a  denizen  of  earth.  And  so,  by  a  sequence  as  strict  as  in 
the  case  of  the  State,  a  separate  set  of  functions  arise  for  the 
Church. 

If,  now,  we  have  followed  correctly,  though  for  a  short  way, 
the  light  of  reason,  it  seems  to  have  led  us  to  the  greater 
light  of  revelation.  This  teaches  us  that  man  at  first  was  not 
a  fettered  bondslave,  that  he  had  not  to  purchase  existence  by 
toil,  that  he  was  not  cursed  with  labor  ;  that  sin  deprived  him 
of  his  spiritual  birth-right,  condemned  him  to  work  that  body 
and  soul  might  remain  together,  and  set  Death  over  him  as  a 
ruthless  taskmaster,  to  keep  him  in  the  furrow.    But  it  teaches 

20 


458  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

US,  also,  that  those  higher  regions,  toward  which  reason  wist- 
fully  but  weakly  looks,  are  real ;  that  we  are  spirits  still :  that 
God  is  yet  our  King  ;  that  immortality  and  spiritual  joys  may 
again  be  ours ;  and  that  we  even  now  exist  in  a  system  of  re- 
lations which  bind  us  to  the  spirit-world.  Secular  government 
has  been  rendered  necessary  by  the  fall ;  the  Church  exists  by 
virtue  of  the  promise.  Both  of  them,  viewed  from  the  stand- 
point of  eternity,  and  regarded  as  separate  systems  of  mechan- 
ism, are  expedients,  and  both  temporary.  The  state  must 
cease  to  exist  when  men  are  purely  spiritual,  and  mutual  in- 
jury is  impossible ;  it  will  cease,  as  we  said  long  since,  when 
justice  and  love  shall  have  become  one.  The  Church,  too, 
viewed  as  a  visible  organization,  will  conduct  men  but  a  cer- 
tain way  ;  it  will  vanish  at  the  gates  of  heaven  ;  it  finds  man 
in  a  condition  of  lapse  and  distemper,  it  aims  to  restore  him 
to  a  paradaisal  state ;  this  done,  it  will  pass  away,  enveloped 
in  a  cloud  of  glory.  For  the  present,  the  duties  of  State  and 
Church  are  discriminated  ;  neither  is  delivered  from  direct  re- 
sponsibility to  God ;  but  the  Church  respects  the  first  table  of 
the  law,  the  State  the  second. 

A  detailed  proof  from  Scripture  that  the  State  has  duties  of 
its  own,  is  necessary  ;  and,  touching  the  distinctive  powers  of 
the  Church,  we  have  declared  our  determination  to  abstain 
fi'om  a  detailed  proof  and  definition  of  these  from  Holy  Writ. 
The  general  course,  however,  and  nature  of  the  evidence  in  the 
latter  case  may  be  easily  and  at  a  glance  comprehended. 
Either,  with  Whately,  we  might  determine  the  powers  which 
pertain  of  necessity  to  every  corporation,  and,  showing  that 
the  Church  is,  by  its  scriptural  definition,  of  that  nature,  infer 
that  these  powers  belong  to  it.  Or,  we  might  cite  the  express 
declarations  of  our  Lord,  by  which  He  committed  the  power 
of  discipline,  the  power,  under  Him,  of  opening  and  shutting 


THOMAS     CUALMERS.  459 

the  kingdom  of  heaven,  to  His  Clmrch;  declarations  with 
which,  whatever  they  mean,  it  can  not  even  be  maintained  that 
any  terrestrial  power  can  interfere,  and  whose  meaning  seems 
as  clear  and  explicit  as  words  can  make  it.  And  we  might 
point,  further,  to  the  indubitable  practice  of  the  early  Church ; 
we  might  instance,  as  absolutely  suflicient  and  conclusive,  the 
case  of  the  Church  of  Corinth.  The  authority  of  Paul  as  a 
preacher  of  Christianity  will  not  be  questioned  by  any  to 
whom  we  now  speak  ;  the  flict  that  he  points  out  the  duty  of 
expelling  a  certain  member  from  the  Church,  is  not  within  the 
reach  of  cavil ;  and  the  whole  nature  and  compass  of  the  disci- 
pline of  a  Christian  Church  are  unfolded  in  his  general  direc- 
tions on  the  subject.  In  a  w^ord,  it  might  be  shown,  by  clear 
and  conclusive  arguing,  that  the  early  Christian  Church  exer- 
cised powers  within  itself  according  to  a  law  given  it  by  in- 
spiration. 

We  shall  not  speak  of  the  delinquencies  which  may  be  vis- 
ited with  discipline  by  a  church.  In  general  terms,  it  exer- 
cises all  the  powers  belonging  to  a  corporation  as  such.  But 
of  the  nature  of  the  penalty  to  be  mflicted  it  is  well  to  remark, 
that  it  must,  of  necessity,  be  purely  spiritual.  The  offense 
committed  is  one  against  God  ;  the  punishment  with  which  it 
is  to  be  visited  can  have  reference  solely  to  Him.  A  physical 
punishment  is,  by  the  nature  of  the  case,  out  of  the  question. 
If  the  member  expelled  or  excommunicated  laughs  at  the 
decree,  it  is,  as  respects  visible  suffering  inflicted  by  men,  null 
and  void.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that  if  the  inhabitants  of  the 
country  in  which  the  decree  takes  effect  are  all  Christians,  and 
consequently  attach  weight  to  the  displeasure  of  the  Church, 
considerable  discomfort  may  result  from  discountenance  by 
his  brethren.  But  this,  be  it  distinctly  noted,  is  a  remark 
which  applies  to  the  working  of  every  possible  corporation. 


460  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

Having  now  granted  that  the  provinces  of  Church  and  State 
are  absolutely  severed,  and  having  laid  it  down  that  the  former, 
in  its  requirements  and  penalties,  must  have  exclusive  refer- 
ence, directly  or  indirectly,  to  celestial  morality,  it  may  seem 
difficult  to  find  any  mode  in  which  they  can  legitimately  and 
beneficially  be  allied.  To  us,  on  the  other  hand,  this  is  now  a 
simple  matter.  The  State  is  bound  to  entertain  the  question, 
regarding  every  agency  which  may  present  itself.  Does  it 
further  the  views  entertained,  the  objects  aimed  at,  by  the 
State  1  We  desire  special  attention  here :  what  we  deem  the 
truth  lies  close  to  deadly  error.  It  is  one  thing  to  ask,  Will 
the  Church,  used  as  a  mechanism  by  the  State,  promote  State 
objects  ?  and  another  to  ask  the  absolutely  distinct  question, 
Will  the  Church,  acting  solely  for  its  own  ends  and  by  its  own 
laws,  promote  that  morality  which  the  State  requires,  and  is 
appointed  by  God  to  require '?  The  first  is  a  question  the 
Church  of  Christ  dare  not  even  listen  to ;  the  second  is  that 
which  the  State  is  bound  to  ask,  and  to  which  the  Church  may, 
we  think,  give  a  decisive  answer,  and  one  on  which  an  alliance 
between  Church  and  State  may  be  reared. 

We  venture  to  say  that  we  are  here  at  the  very  spring  and 
original  fountain  of  all  the  errors,  theoretic  and  practical, 
which  have  encumbered  this  subject :  by  a  distinct  recollec- 
tion and  recognition  of  the  separate  provinces  of  celestial  and 
terrestrial  morality,  and  of  the  respective  functions  of  Church 
and  State,  such  errors  had  been  obviated.  The  Church,  in 
virtue  of  its  origin,  by  charter  of  its  King,  in  the  discharge 
of  those  duties  which  alone  render  it  necessary  and  existent 
in  the  sum  of  things,  concerns  itself  with  celestial  morality  ; 
with  a  morality  which  lies  beyond  the  pale  of  human  law, 
whose  rejection  may  infringe  no  right  of  man  with  man,  which 
is  between  man  and  his  God.     Reason,  in  its  highest  and  pur- 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  461 

est  moments,  declares  the  province  and  functions  of  the  Church 
to  be  real ;  the  Word  of  God  assigns  it  certain  duties,  and 
appoints  for  it  a  certain  government.  The  only  offer  it  can 
or  dare  listen  to  from  the  State,  is  one  which  will  guarantee 
its  action  as  a  CJmrch.  Turning  to  the  State,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  find  it  answerable  to  God  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
common  weal ;  and  it  is  but  another  form  of  expressing  this, 
to  say,  that  it  is  answerable  for  the  promotion  of  those  virtues 
on  which  the  safety  and  prosperity  of  a  commonwealth  de- 
pend. When  a  Church  comes  before  it,  then,  it  must  simply 
inquire  whether  it,  acting  in  the  only  way  in  which  a  Church 
can  act,  will  promote  public  morality ;  in  other  words,  whether 
the  promotion  of  celestial  morality  will  further  that  other  mo- 
rality by  which  a  State  subsists. 

And  what  answer  is  it  right  for  a  State  to  render  to  this 
question  1  We  think  that  State  and  Church  can  each  satisfy 
the  other  here,  so  as  to  form  an  alliance  not  merely  of  harm- 
less, but  of  eminently  beneficent  nature.  State  and  Church 
hold  their  powers  from  the  same  Hand ;  God  has  appointed 
them  to  perform  different  functions,  but  they  are  united  by 
the  bond  of  a  common  service.  Their  powers  are  co-ordinate, 
but  they  mutually  assist  and  establish  each  other.  The  one 
grand  argument  to  prove  that  the  State  ought  to  be  in  kindly 
alliance  with  the  Church,  ought  to  countenance,  and  to  its  ability 
support  it,  is  this :  That  reason,  history,  and  Scripture,  blend 
their  testimonies  to  show  that  religion  is  the  only  safeguard 
of  a  nation,  that  love  to  one's  neighbor  can  never  nationally 
subsist  save  as  dependent  upon  love  to  one's  God.  We  have 
in  a  former  part  of  this  volume  adduced  sufiicient  proof  of 
that. 

Observe  how  close  truth  here  lies  to  error.  The  Church, 
forgetting  that  its  province  is  essentially  and  exclusively  spir- 


462  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

itual,  that  its  penalties  can  be  terrible  in  the  esteem  of  a  man, 
only  in  so  flir  as  he  is  a  Christian  and  believes  in  its  power 
with  God  (with  the  qualification  we  formerly  mentioned),  over- 
steps its  bound,  and  touches  a  man's  terrestrial  possessions  ; 
fines,  tortures,  slays  him.  This  is  an  anomaly  in  nature ;  no 
Church  can  have  power  to  touch  a  hair  of  a  man's  head,  or  an 
ear  of  his  corn.  Of  this  error  we  need  not  speak  ;  it  has  taken 
form  in  a  system  which  has  not  failed  to  illustrate  its  baneful 
effects,  the  system  of  Popery. 

But  in  our  day  it  is  an  error  of  a  very  different  order  which 
prevails.  It  is  the  error  of  regarding  the  Church  as  an  organ- 
ization to  be  looked  at  as  primarily  and  directly  subservient 
to  the  interests  of  State  morality.  This  ignores  celestial  mo- 
rality, and,  by  turning  it  into  a  system  of  police,  positively 
annihilates  the  Church.  Now,  we  venture  to  say,  that  with  a 
great  body  among  our  respectable,  cultivated  classes,  no  other 
idea  of  a  Church  is  to  be  found  than  this,  that  it  is  a  piece  of 
State  mechanism,  to  be  worked  by  the  State  for  its  own  pur- 
poses. Such  a  Church  is  easily  conceivable.  It  is  one  which 
simply  relinquishes  its  native  functions  as  connected  with  ce- 
lestial morality.  A  secular  government  desires  that  men  be 
upright,  and  sober,  and  brave ;  but  it  directly  subserves  no 
end  of  state  that  men  believe  in  an  everlasting  reward  and  a 
heavenly  King :  yet,  if  the  Church  has  a  distinct  existence, 
these  must  be  of  cajDital  importance  for  it.  A  Church  is  re- 
quired to  proclaim  from  her  pulpits  a  morality  immaculately 
pure ;  government  may  find,  or  imagine  it  finds,  such  morality 
reflect  in  no  flattering  manner  on  its  own  measures :  nay,  it 
may  desire  the  advocacy  of  its  measures,  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, from  the  pulpit ;  and  so  the  process  may  go  on  extend- 
ing and  deepening,  till  the  very  essence  and  origin  of  a  Church 
are  forgotten  !     And  yet,  as  we  say,  do  not  ideas,  tending  di- 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  463 

recti}  to  this  result,  pervade  society  in  our  day  1  Is  it  not  a 
common  notion,  however  unconsciously  held,  among  the  mem- 
bers of  our  National  Churches,  that  these  are  Churches  in 
virtue  of  their  connection  with  the  State  ?  Is  it  not  a  fact  that 
many  excellent  persons  in  our  Churches,  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land for  instance,  w^ould  apply  the  term  of  schism  to  a  sepa- 
ration from  the  State  1  As  if  the  State  made  the  establishment 
of  England  a  Church,  as  if  it  could  exercise  no  function  apart 
from  the  State,  as  if  it  would  be  equivalent  to  its  extinction 
as  a  Church,  to  throw  it  again  into  the  condition  in  which  that 
of  Corinth  was  when  it  received  its  doctrine  from  the  mouth 
of  Paul !  Among  the  Dissenters,  on  the  other  hand,  and  in 
what  may  be  called  a  negative  form,  the  same  idea  has  exten- 
sive prevalence.  It  seemed  perfectly  absurd  to  Foster  to 
hear  it  asserted,  as  the  Scotch  Non-intrusion  party  astonished 
him  by  asserting,  that  a  state  might  endow,  but  could  never 
regulate  a  Church.  As  if,  forsooth,  the  question  of  endowment 
or  non-endowment  were  a  vital,  or  even  an  important  one  in 
the  matter !  The  grand  question  is.  Whether  the  State  is 
bound  to  sanction,  countenance,  and  promote  the  Church ;  set- 
tle this  affirmatively,  and  you  have  settled  the  question  of  an 
establishment ;  whether  the  form  of  support  which  consists  in 
handing  it  a  certain  portion  of  money  is  sound  and  legitimate 
or  not,  is  a  different  question  altogether,  and  of  very  subordi- 
nate importance.  To  imagine  that  the  acceptance  of  a  certain 
form  of  support  implied  an  abnegation  of  distinctive  and 
essential  power  and  existence,  was  surely  an  egregious  error 
and  one  which,  fallen  into  by  such  an  intellect  as  Foster's, 
indicated  wide  oblivion  to  the  real  nature  and  functions  of  a 
Church. 

We  can  not  sufficiently  denounce   this   great  heresy.     A 
Church  such  as  we  have  seen  men  imagine  for  themselves 


464  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

would  not  necessarily  turn  men  to  God ;  it  would  merely  pre- 
serve them  in  a  state  of  respectalDility  and  loyalty.  This  is 
against  the  very  idea  of  a  Christian  Church ;  if  it  becomes 
universal,  religion,  strictly  speaking,  is  as  good  as  dead  in  our 
Churches.  The  sister  establishments  may,  doubtless,  go  on 
for  a  time ;  and  it  may  even  be  deemed  desirable  by  many 
without  their  pale,  that  they  should  still  continue  to  subsist. 
Evils  there  are  which  they  may  certainly  obstruct.  But  if 
they  become  simply  a  part  of  the  government  mechanism  for 
the  quiet  guidance  of  the  nation ;  if  they  are  to  be  primarily 
and  undeniably  hills  of  dead  earth  heaped  on  the  Enceladus 
of  modern  revolutionism  ;  if  their  strength  is  to  be  made  up 
of  the  many  who,  having  no  religion  of  their  own,  take  that 
which  comes  to  hand  with  a  government  sanction;  if  their 
members  are  to  be  not  Christians,  but  "  respectable  persons ;" 
if  their  piety  is  to  be  not  the  reverent  upturning  of  the  finite 
eye  to  the  Infinite  God,  but  a  fluctuating  accommodation  to 
the  religious  fiishions  of  the  day — that  goes  once  to  church, 
or  twice,  as  is  the  mode,  that  subscribes  to  missions,  and  gets 
up  sales  for  charitable  purposes,  or  does  not,  as  is  the  mode, 
that  has  family  prayers  or  not,  as  is  the  mode — then  they 
may  indeed  remain  for  a  time,  and  even  do  their  work,  and 
get  their  reward,  but  the  first  blast  of  millennial  Christianity 
will  sweep  them  utterly  away.  The  Tyrians  chained  Apollo 
to  the  statue  of  Dagon,  but  Alexander  laid  their  towers  in  the 
dust  all  the  same !  Revolution  is  fearful ;  the  unchained 
masses,  foaming,  maddened  in  atheistic  frenzy,  are  fearful ;  but 
Christianity  chained  in  the  temple  of  Mammon  is  the  most 
fearful  of  all. 

We  can  have  no  hesitation  in  declaring,  that  the  great  prin- 
ciples we  have  sketched,  or  rather  the  one  principle  of  the 
separate  existence  and  co-ordinate  Divine  origin  of  the  Church, 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  465 

in  perfect  independence  of  the  State,  constituted  the  vital  ele- 
ment in  the  long  struggle  which  issued  in  the  rending  asunder 
of  the  Church  of  Scotland.  To  one  out  of  the  din  of  conflict, 
who  contemplates  tlie  matter  in  the  calm  stillness  of  distance, 
the  whole  becomes  absolutely  plain.  We  say  not  that  there 
were  no  such  obscuring  or  confounding  influences  around  those 
who  were  parties  in  the  debate,  as  to  render  it  conceivable, 
and  consistent  with  honesty,  that  they  should  oppose  that  view 
of  the  case  taken  by  the  party  of  Chalmers  ;  and  plain  as  it 
seems  to  us,  that  the  question  was  one  touching  expressly 
those  principles  we  have  laid  down,  there  is  perhaps  no  person 
now  in  Scotland  who  would  refuse  assent  in  terms  to  what  we 
have  said.  Yet,  putting  the  argument  of  the  party  which  op- 
posed the  majority  in  the  most  favorable  light  possible,  what 
does  it  amount  to  ?  Suppose  that  the  Church,  in  admitting 
the  ministers  of  Chapels  of  Ease  to  a  full  and  equal  share  in 
every  ministerial  function,  did  overstep  the  letter  of  its  legal 
powers,  and  that  the  whole  actings  of  government  toward  it 
during  the  struggle  were  influenced  by  this  consideration,  how 
does  it  aflect  the  question  1  It  seems  to  us  merely  to  clear  it 
up,  and  to  bring  it  within  a  narrow  compass.  If  a  Church 
possess  corporate  freedom,  we  shall  agree  that  it  has  tliose 
powers  which  belong  by  nature  to  a  corporation.  These  we 
may  as  well  take  from  Whateley ;  no  one  will  say  he  fixes 
the  standard  too  high.  Corporate  freedom  implies  that  the 
body  in  question  has  officers,  rules,  a  power  of  discipline,  and 
an  authority  to  admit  or  exclude  members.  Now,  when  Chal- 
mers in  London  declared  the  Church  of  Scotland  free,  it  either 
was  so  in  the  above  sense,  or  it  was  not.  If  it  was,  then  it 
is  but  a  statement  of  an  obvious  fact,  that  it  was  competent 
to  it  to  admit  the  chapel  ministers  to  its  full  membersliip. 
If  it  was  not  free,  if  Chalmers  was  mistaken^  if,  from  any 
20* 


466  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

cause  whatsoever,  or  in  any  circumstances,  this  right  was 
called  in  question,  it  was  necessary,  at  whatever  expense,  that 
it  should  be  vindicated.  It  will  be  said  that  this  act  of  admis- 
sion on  the  part  of  the  Church  affected,  indirectly  but  unques- 
tionably, the  civil  rights  of  certain  individuals.  Be  it  so ;  we 
have  made  full  provision  for  the  objection ;  we  simply  say, 
that,  if  a  time  had  come  when  civil  rights,  when  endowment, 
in  one  form  or  another,  interfered  with  the  very  life  of  the 
Church,  the  time  had  also  come  when  it  behooved  that  Church 
to  declare,  that  its  perfect  severance  from  all  endowment  was, 
strictly  speaking,  of  infinitely  less  moment  than  that  there  should 
remain  the  faintest  doubt  of  its  freedom.  It  is,  besides,  a 
well-known  fact  that  the  Church,  ere  laying  its  endowments 
at  the  foot  of  the  State,  expressed  its  willingness  to  surrender 
all  control  over  the  money  paid  to  those  inducted  into  its  par- 
ishes. That  fatal  error,  however,  which  we  have  noted,  pre- 
vailed widely.  Men  deemed  it  something  anomalous  and  un- 
heard of,  that  a  Church  should  receive  money  from  a  State, 
and  yet  possess  a  jurisdiction  absolutely  distinct  from  that  of 
the  secular  government.  It  must  be  added,  that  the  catastro- 
phe was  heightened  and  induced  by  a  too  great  oblivion  in  the 
public  mind  to  the  nature  and  extent  of  Christian  discipline, 
and  a  thick  and  stupid  ignorance  of  the  very  ideas  and  neces- 
sities of  corporate  existence. 

Chalmers,  looking  at  the  whole  question  with  the  eye  at 
once  of  a  statesman  and  divine,  saw  into  its  essence,  and  took 
his  position  accordingly.  With  no  elaborate  searching  or 
arguing,  his  piercing  eye  at  once  flashed  through  all  sophistry, 
to  the  truth  that  the  life  of  the  Church  was  in  danger.  It  was 
with  a  certain  astonishment  and  sorrow  that  he  fought  his  last 
battle.  If  ever  there  beat  a  loyal  heart,  it  was  in  his  bosom. 
Since  the  day  when  he  wept  in  the  garden  at  Blenheim,  since 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  467 

the  day  he  had  enlisted  in  the  volunteers,  chaplain  and  lieu- 
tenant, since  the  day  he  had  invoked  death  to  smite  him  ere 
his  country  fell,  he  had  ever  loved  kingship,  and  national  stead- 
flistness,  and  the  dignity  of  an  ancestral  Church.  He  knew 
that  the  Church  of  his  fathers  was  throbbing  with  spiritual  life, 
as  she  had  not  done  for  two  centuries ;  he  saw  her  mission- 
aries going  to  the  ends  of  the  earth ;  he  saw  her  blooming 
into  new  fruitfulness  at  home,  and  casting  her  mantle  over  all 
the  population.  It  was  with  dismay  and  amazement  that  he 
witnessed  the  infatuation  of  the  government ;  that  he  listened 
to  the  unspeakable  nonsense  uttered  about  clerical  oppression, 
popery,  liberty  of  the  subject,  etc.;  that  he  saw  Conservatism 
in  Scotland  trying  to  get  the  tough  old  Presbyterian  Samson, 
his  hair  grown  after  two  centuries  of  weakness,  to  be  a  mere 
maker  of  sport  for  it.  As  he  said  of  his  parting  from  his 
dear  sequestered  Kilmany,  there  was  tearing  of  the  heart- 
strings there ! 

Yet  we  shall  also  say  that  there  was  something  fine  in  the 
spectacle  of  Chalmers  contending  at  the  head  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland,  for  the  fundamental  doctrine  that  the  Church  of  Christ 
owes  its  existence  to  no  fiat  of  the  State,  to  no  dole  of  public 
money,  but  to  the  word  of  its  Master,  and  to  that  alone.  That 
it  was  the  duty  of  the  State  to  support  the  Church,  he  held  to 
be  irrefragable ;  but  to  make  the  Church,  not  a  fire  which  it 
fed  with  fuel,  but  a  machine  which  it  regulated  and  worked, 
he  saw  to  be  a  fundamental  heresy.  With  a  mind  perfectly 
settled  on  the  question,  and  with  an  intrepidity  which  his  known 
and  enthusiastic  respect  for  constituted  authorities  rendered 
the  more  conspicuous  and  the  more  noble,  he  calmly  yet  un- 
flinchingly contended.  His  hair  was  growing  white,  and  a 
deeper  stillness  was  settling  in  his  eye,  though  the  old  liquid 
fire  would  at  times  glare  out ;  his  flime  had  spread  over  the 


468  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

old  world  and  the  new ;  he  had  been  flattered  by  the  highest 
aristocracy  of  the  land :  yet  he  was  still  the  same  devout  hum- 
ble Christian  that  he  had  become  when  first  the  light  of  God 
opened  upon  him  at  Kilmany,  he  was  still  the  same  earnest 
worker  as  when  he  set  Glasgow  into  a  ferment  of  Christian 
Philanthropy,  he  was  still  the  same  tender-hearted  personal 
friend  who  wept  over  the  grave  of  Thomas  Smith.  His  words 
his  writings,  and,  most  of  all,  his  example,  had  struck  new  vi 
tality  through  all  the  borders  of  Christian  Scotland ;  and  now, 
as  the  glories  of  eventide  were  beginning  to  encircle  him,  he 
saw  around  him  an  army  of  young  ardent  spirits,  who,  in 
their  pulpits,  preached  Christ  and  Him  crucified,  and,  in  the 
assemblies  of  their  Church,  defended  her  rights  with  an  ability 
and  a  persistency  which  astonished  every  party.  The  sun 
looks  proudest  in  the  evening,  and  the  cause  of  his  grandeur 
is,  that,  ere  he  himself  sinks  to  rest,  a  thousand  clouds,  which 
his  light  brightens  into  radiance  and  beauty,  encircle  and  seem 
to  escort  him :  so,  when  a  great  man  draws  to  his  rest,  a 
thousand  younger  men,  whose  fire  has  been  kindled  by  him, 
reflect  his  light  and  testify  his  power. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  summer  of  1843,  Thomas  Chalmers 
and  in  all  nearly  five  hundred  ministers  of  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land severed  the  connection  which  bound  them  to  the  State, 
relinquished  every  claim  on  its  immunities,  and  re-constituted 
the  Church  in  a  state  of  freedom.  Not  abjuring  the  principle 
of  an  establishment,  but  protesting  that  no  government  sanc- 
tion could  stand  in  the  room  of  that  Divine  authority  which 
gave  life  to  a  Church,  they  parted  from  a  government  which 
seemed  ignorant  of  its  nature,  and  claimed  an  authority 
paramount  to  that  of  its  charter  written  by  the  finger  of  God. 
By  its  position,  the  Church  is  ready,  at  any  moment,  to  re- 
unite with  the  State  ;  but  this  can  not  be,  until  it  is  acknowl- 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  469 

edged  by  the  highest  authority  in  these  realms,  that,  without 
consideration  of  circumstances  or  results,  it  is  corporately 
free,  within  itself  supreme.  Till  then,  it  must  remain  dis- 
established. 

The  act  of  Chalmers  and  his  followers  requires  no  trumpet- 
ing, and  none  shall  be  attempted  here.  But  it  is  a  mere  argu- 
mentative assertion,  removed  altogether  from  enthusiasm  or 
exaggeration,  that  the  Scottish  Disruption,  whatever  minor 
opinions  may  be  held  regarding  it,  did  evince  that  Christianity 
has  a  real  and  a  powerful  hold  upon  both  the  pastors  and  the 
people  of  Scotland  in  our  day.  We  care  not  how  little  be 
made  of  this ;  we  know  too  well  that  Scotland  has  little  to 
boast  of,  and  great  cause  for  repentance ;  but  we  can  not  de- 
fraud ourselves  of  the  hope  and  assurance  that  there  is  ground 
to  stand  upon,  that  there  is  a  fire  in  the  nation's  heart  which 
may  be  fanned  into  a  beneficent  light  and  heat.  In  an  age  of 
respectability  and  commonplace,  in  an  age  when  the  decorous, 
the  established,  the  aristocratic,  is  still  so  revered  and  clung 
to  by  at  least  our  middle  classes,  a  large  body  of  men,  well 
advanced  in  life,  and  many  of  them  tottering  under  gray  hairs, 
deliberately  stepped  from  under  the  smile  of  power,  deliber- 
ately risked  their  continuance  as  a  Cliurch  on  the  Christianity 
of  the  people  and  the  blessing  of  God.  Such  events  do  not 
occur  in  the  history  of  dead  religions ;  such  phenomena  can 
not  appear  where  religion  is  a  doubt. 

The  whole  spectacle  of  the  Disruption,  viewed  in  the  re- 
lation borne  to  it  by  government,  is  anomalous  and  amazing. 
Disencumbered  of  all  incidental  and  extraneous  entanglements 
arising  from  the  civil  rights  of  individuals,  the  power  claimed 
by  the  Church  of  Scotland,  ere  demitting  its  endowment,  was 
precisely  that  which  is  exercised  by  every  Dissenting  body  in 
the  kingdom,  and  which  it  at  once  began  to  exercise  on  part- 


470  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

ing  from  the  State.  This  circumstance  alone  appears  sufficient 
to  Isaac  Taylor  to  stamp  the  conduct  of  the  State  as  impolitic ; 
and,  though  we  should  take  far  higher  grounds  than  he  in  dis- 
cussing the  general  question,  we  deem  the  fact  an  absolute  evi- 
dence that  there  was  no  ruling  British  statesman  of  the  day 
capable  of  taking  a  strong  original  look  at  the  matter.  The 
sovereign  power  of  Britain  tore  asunder  a  body  of  known  loy- 
alty, which  sat  enthroned  in  the  affection  of  the  mass  of  the 
people  of  Scotland,  and  whose  influence  could  not  but  be  pro- 
nounced, on  the  whole,  promotive  of  public  morality,  for  one 
of  two  causes :  either  because  it  would  not  permit  the  Church 
to  do  what  every  Dissenting  body  does,  and  what  this  body 
could  not  when  disestablished  be  prevented  from  doing ;  or 
because  there  was  not  ability  and  decision  in  its  compass  suf^ 
ficient  to  disentangle  and  make  short  work  with  a  few  beggarly 
questions  touching  money  matters.  From  this  dilemma  there 
is  no  escape.  Into  one  of  two  errors  or  both,  it  seemed  im- 
possible for  British  statesmen  to  avoid  falling  :  into  that  of 
fancying  that  the  Church  claimed  a  Popish  power,  that  it  was 
going  to  erect  a  spiritual  despotism  ;  to  which,  remembering 
that  we  live  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  that  all  Protestant 
bodies  are  thus  spiritual  despotisms,  we  decline  replying,  as 
sheer  and  infantile  foolery  :  or  into  that  of  affirming  the  Church 
to  be  a  mere  state  police,  paid,  and,  by  natural  consequence, 
superintended,  by  government ;  which  we  have  already  abund- 
antly shown  to  be  an  ignorance  of  the  very  conditions  of  the 
question,  a  negation  of  the  existence  of  a  Church. 

Chalmers  was  now  becoming  an  old  man.  On  passing  his 
sixtieth  year,  he  entered  on  what  he  called  the  Sabbath  of  his 
life,  six  working  decades  past.  It  was  a  beautiful  thought,  and 
showed  how  his  gitat  soul  yearned,  like  all  the  noble,  for  re- 
pose.    Over  the  last  years  of  his  life  there  rests  a  still  and 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  4Yl 

pensive  beauty,  a  soft  radiance  of  Sabbatic  calm  ;  not  unshaded 
by  sadness,  not  all  unbroken  by  agitation,  they  are  wrapped 
in  peace  and  harmony  by  that  effect  which  poet-painters  ever 
love,  the  dawning,  in  the  background,  of  infinite  light.  It  was 
hard,  with  now  aged  limb,  to  leave  that  establishment,  from 
whose  battlements,  in  the  morn,  and  noontide,  and  hale  after- 
noon of  his  years,  he  had  looked  with  a  glance  of  pride  and 
satisfaction,  such  as  lit  the  minstrel  king's,  when  he  looked 
from  the  towers  of  Zion.  It  was,  indeed,  a  high  consolation 
that  in  Scotland  there  was  still  enough  of  "  celestial  fire"  to  or- 
ganize and  animate  a  free  Church  :  but  his  faith  in  voluntary- 
ism was  not  even  yet  absolute ;  and  the  one  grand  idea  of  his 
life,  the  reaping  of  the  great  out-field,  the  diffusion  of  Chris- 
tianity over  all  the  land,  seemed  no  longer  realizable.  That 
sadness  w^hich  we  have  seen  to  be  characteristic  of  the  close 
of  the  niost  memorable  and  precious  lives,  descended  per- 
ceptibly, in  the  evening  of  his  days,  on  the  manly  brow  of 
Chalmers. 

The  general  aspect  of  these  years  is  of  deep  interest  and  in- 
struction, and  can  not  but  reward  a  few  final  glances. 

While  the  member  of  an  established  Church,  his  large  heart 
had  opened  its  gates  to  every  thing  noble  in  dissent,  to  receive 
and  love  it ;  and  now,  when  he  was  himself  member  of  a 
disestablished  body,  his  nature  flung  aside  those  constraining 
and  cramping  cords  of  sectarianism,  which  seem  inevitably  to 
twine  themselves,  however  insensibly,  around  men  of  particular 
parties  and  denominations.  It  was  with  a  glow  of  generous 
and  enthusiastic  joy  that  he  hailed  the  Evangelical  Alliance  ; 
as  one  in  a  fleet  on  a  stormy  sea,  when  morning  was  drawing 
on,  might  hail  the  streaks  of  that  sun  which  was  ':o  extinguish 
the  lamp  in  each  separate  vessel.  And  with  a  fearless  and 
truly  Christian  cosmopolitanism,  he  threw  out  h'"  sympathies 


472  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

in  other  directions.  He  earnestly  accepted  a  contribution 
toward  the  cause  of  humanity,  whencesoever  it  came.  He 
could  stand  immovable  in  his  own  belief:  and  yet  hear  words 
of  instruction  or  monition  from  others  whose  opinions  were 
widely  apart  from  his  :  he  could  rest  in  his  belief  that  Chris- 
tianit}^,  that  the  preaching  of  Christ  crucified,  could  alone  re- 
generate the  world ;  and  yet  he  could  hear,  in  the  words  of 
Mr.  Carlyle,  the  voice  of  God  to  the  Churches,  proclaiming 
that  their  indifference  and  their  dormancy  had  left  a  breach  to 
the  enemy. 

What  a  stirring  gleam  of  Christian  valor,  too,  in  that  deter- 
mination, old  as  he  was,  to  master  German  philosophy !  He 
is  not  the  man  to  be  afraid;  he  will  enter  tliis  untrodden 
region ;  if  any  new  seed,  or  fruit,  or  flower  of  truth  has  been 
found,  he  must  know  and  possess  it ;  if  any  new  form  of  error 
has  appeared,  he  must  go,  like  a  brave  and  faithful  son,  to  set 
it,  yet  another  trophy,  on  Truth's  immortal  brow ! 

His  intellect  was  now  calm,  comprehensive,  sage ;  his  heart 
was  fresh  as  with  the  dew  of  youth.  He  again  read  Shakes- 
peare, Milton,  and  Gibbon.  His  re-perusal  of  the  former  fur- 
nishes a  beautiful  and  characteristic  trait.  After  a  life  of  con- 
tinual effort,  of  perpetual  contact  with  men  and  things,  after 
the  world  had  done  its  worst  toward  him,  both  in  applause  and 
in  censure,  he  still  reveled  in  the  aerial  gayety,  and  many- 
tinted  summer-like  beauty,  the  genial,  though  keen  sagacity, 
of  Midsummer's  Night's  Dream.  Of  Shakespeare's  plays  that 
was  his  favorite.  It  is  a  very  remarkable  circumstance ;  tell- 
ing of  a  gentleness  of  nature,  a  kind,  gleesome  humor,  an  ex- 
uberant unstrained  force  and  freshness  of  intellect,  surely  rare 
among  theologians.  As  kindred  to  this,  and  of  still  deeper 
beauty,  we  may  regard  his  tender  playful  affection  for  his  in- 
fant grandson.     He  writes  to  little  Tommy  with  the  perfect 


THOMAS     C  n  A  L  M  E  R  S  .  473 

sympathy  of  one  whom  the  world  has  still  left  guileless  as  a 
child ;  he  relates  little  anecdotes  for  his  amusement;  tells  him 
of  birds'  nests ;  demonstrates  to  him,  with  syllogistic  conclu- 
siveness, that  it  is  a  logical  mistake  to  love  his  hobby-horse 
better  than  his  grandpapa,  simply  because  the  former  is  "  big- 
gest :"  he  does  not  forget  to  send  him  toys  when  at  a  distance, 
he  makes  him  feel  himself  quite  a  man  as  he  stands  beside 
grandpapa  assisting  him  to  range  his  books ;  and  best  of  all, 
he  leads  him,  by  kind,  winning,  imperceptible  ways,  to  the  foot- 
stool of  their  common  Father.  The  child  of  four,  and  the 
veteran  of  threescore,  kneel  down  together  alone,  that  the 
smile  of  God  may  light  on  both  His  children ! 

There  is  one  negative  characteristic  which  is,  we  sup^DOse, 
constant  in  men  deserving  to  be  called,  in  any  right  sense, 
great.  They  are  perfectly  free  of  knowingness ;  of  the  light- 
sniffing,  nil  admirari  mood,  that  trembles  at  the  thought  of  a 
sneer ;  they  are  more  simple  than  other  men.  This  was  sig- 
nally the  case  with  Chalmers. 

It  is  by  looking  at  the  inner  life  of  Chalmers,  at  his  walk 
with  God,  that  we  come  to  know  and  understand  him.  It  is 
by  knowing  well  what  he  was  in  his  closet,  that  we  can  explain 
what  he  was  in  the  world  of  men.  The  three  reverences  that 
figure  so  largely  in  Goethe's  system  w^ere  all  found  there ;  with 
this  difference,  that  the  word  and  feeling  of  reverence  were  ap- 
plied to  no  finite  being,  but  only  to  the  Infinite  God.  The 
"  trust  thyself  of  Emerson,  that  "  iron  string  to  which  every 
heart  vibrates,"  w^as  never  shown  in  any  better  than  in  him ;  but 
it  w^as  held,  not  as  the  whole  truth,  but  as  half  of  the  truth, 
which  could  never  become  the  whole.  It  was  the  self-trust  of 
humility,  not  of  pride ;  it  was  the  trust  that  knew  the  world, 
hanging  as  it  seems  on  nothing,  to  be  yet  upheld  by  the  hand 
of  God ;  it  was  the  trust  which  felt  nothing  finite  worthy  to  be 


4Y4  THOMAS     CHALMERS 

feared,  since  a  cord  of  love  bound  him  eternally  to  the  very- 
heart  of  God.  He  trusted  himself  as  David,  Paul,  Luther, 
Cromwell  trusted ;  but  it  was  among  the  finite  he  did  so ;  be- 
fore his  God,  he  lay  low.  He  trusted  himself  to  face  the 
world,  but  not  to  scale  the  universe.  Christianity  has  furnished 
a  greater  number  of  courageous,  iron-built  men,  than  either  phi- 
losophy or  any  religion  besides  itself  can  show ;  but  the  stern 
est  and  greatest  of  them  bowed  the  head  to  the  Highest 
Christianity  leaves  no  place  for  cowardice,  while  it  blasts  the 
eye  of  pride.  Chalmers  was  a  man  of  prayer ;  he  was  much 
alone  with  God.  And  how  much  is  included  in  this  assertion  ? 
Did  the  world  shout  and  adulate?  Its  voice  became  silent 
and  of  little  moment  when  the  inner  chambers  of  the  heart 
were  flung  open  before  the  eye  of  God,  searching  into  the  re- 
cesses of  the  soul,  casting  a  ray  of  celestial  pureness,  in  whose 
light  motes,  else  invisible,  were  seen.  Did  the  world  rage  and 
scorn  ?  Its  frown  became  of  small  importance  in  the  smile  of 
God,  its  rage  and  tumult  of  slight  avail,  if  the  voice  that  called 
order  out  of  chaos  said,  "  Let  there  be  light."  The  hallowing 
influence  of  habitual  prayer  pervaded  his  whole  life ;  to  com- 
fort in  adversity,  to  strengthen  in  toil,  to  cheer  in  battle,  to 
sober  in  victory.  Humble  yet  courageous,  weak  yet  strong, 
he  saw  himself  filled  with  human  frailty  and  human  fliults,  yet 
he  shone  before  the  eyes  of  men. 

The  deep  sagacity  which  had  been  ripening  during  a  lifetime 
was  true  and  sure  at  its  quiet  close.  "  The  public  is  just  a  big 
baby  !"  What  a  profound  and  deliberate  knowledge  of  society 
is  here ;  and  what  a  comparison  !  A  big  baby  !  a  great,  pulpy, 
lumbering  thing,  that  could  do  nothing  but  bawl !  Yet  how  he 
grasped  to  his  heart  any  really  noble  and  godly  man ;  even 
with  a  kiss,  as  Tholuck  said  in  amazement !  The  true  individ- 
ual soul,  and  the  real  hidden  work,  were  still  what  he  dearly 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  476 

loved.  From  the  glare  of  observation  he  shrunk  aside ;  hut 
you  might  have  seen  him  m  Burke's  Close,  in  the  West  Port, 
at  his  old  work,  bringing  Heaven's  light  into  the  hovel  and  the 
heart  of  the  poor. 

Taken  all  in  all,  he  was  a  noble  type  of  the  Christian  man. 
He  showed  how  Christianity  embraces  and  ennobles,  but  does 
not  cramp  or  curtail  humanity ;  how,  in  that  divine  influence, 
all  old  things  do  indeed  pass  away,  but  leave  no  desert  behind, 
for  a  fliirer  verdure  springs,  beautified  by  immortal  flowers, 
and  nourished  from  living  fountains,  in  an  inner  world  where 
all  things  have  become  new.  The  vital  warmth  which  would 
pervade  a  system  of  society  really  Christian,  can  be  but  coun- 
terfeited and  galvanically  mimicked  by  worldliness;  Chris- 
tianity extends  her  claim  and  dominion  over  every  thing,  if  it 
have  the  one  characteristic  of  being  good.  From  the  breast 
of  Chalmers  all  the  counterfeits  of  worldliness  w^ere  banished, 
but  the  goodly  company  of  healthful  human  emotions,  of  no- 
ble human  attributes,  entered  in  their  stead.  The  cold  affecta- 
tions, the  hypocritic  smiles,  the  mellifluous  falsehood,  the 
greedy  complaisance,  all  the  glitter  by  which  fashion  hides  her 
heart  of  ice,  never  found  any  point  of  adherence  in  him ;  but 
the  manly  and  genial  deference  of  true  politeness,  a  politeness 
based  on  the  essential  equality  in  the  sight  of  God  of  "  all 
human  souls,"  was  truly  his ;  to  peer  and  peasant,  he  was  the 
same  self-respecting,  yet  truly  modest  and  courteous  man — no 
touch  of  trepidation,  no  tone  of  flattery,  toward  the  one ;  no 
"  insolence  of  condescension,"  no  patronizing  blandness,  toward 
the  other.  He  loved  genial  mirth  and  a  deep  hearty  laugh ; 
the  simplicity  of  etiquette,  the  giggle  of  frivolity,  were  alike 
alien  to  his  nature. 

It  is  well,  likewise,  to  remember,  that  his  heart  was  ever 
kept  warm  and  fresh  by  those  gentle  ministries  which  nature 


476  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

has  appointed,  and  Christianity,  of  course,  sanctions :  by  the 
tender  influences  of  home,  by  the  wife  of  his  bosom,  and  the 
children  whom  God  had  given  him.  These  are  nature's  general 
means,  and  doubtless  they  are,  in  general,  the  best  to  preserve 
health  in  the  whole  system  of  thought,  of  feeling,  and  of  action. 
The  man  who  plays  for  an  hour  or  two  at  bowls  with  his  chil- 
dren, as  his  elder  found  Chalmers  doing,  will  not  likely,  with 
Godwin  or  any  other,  fabricate  for  you  a  world  on  philosophic 
principles,  with  ice  figures  going  by  clockwork  for  men,  and 
painted  in  the  highest  style  of  art.  Follow  the  ecclesiastic,  or 
professor,  from  the  debate  or  the  conclave,  into  his  own  home ; 
there  see  him,  in  his  warm  arm-chair,  with  his  three  daughters 
near  him,  one  shampooing  his  feet,  another  talking  the  sort  of 
nonsense  which  she  knows  will  set  him  into  fits  of  laughter, 
and  the  third  making  up  the  perfect  harmony  by  playing  the 
tunes  of  dear  old  Scotland ;  can  you  apprehend  narrowness  or 
fanaticism  in  that  man  *?  Will  not  that  laugh  shake  out  of  the 
heart  every  taint  of  theological  rancor,  lift  from  the  brow  every 
shade  of  gloom,  express  that  unromantic,  unostentatious,  un- 
speakable comfort,  which  fills  a  really  Christian  home  1  These 
are  drops  of  sweetness  instilled  into  the  very  fountain  of  the 
life ;  no  wonder  that  the  streams  are  clear,  and  musical,  and 
bordered  with  flowers. 

Those  combinations  in  which  nature  most  cunningly  dis- 
plays her  power,  and  which  give  the  rare  and  excelling  charac- 
ter, were  variously  represented  by  Chalmers ;  his  mind  was 
rarely  complete  and  symmetrical.  An  eye  to  see,  a  voice  to 
speak,  an  arm  to  do :  few  men  have  had  all  three  as  Chalmers. 
The  strength  that  can  stand  alone  :  the  social  sympathy  that 
plants  little  grappling  gold-hooks  of  love  in  all  surrounding 
hearts  :  the  receptive  faculty  to  grasp  the  thoughts  of  others, 
to  sift  them,  to  compare  them,  to  mete  their  power  of  light  to 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  477 

reveal  truth  and  of  lightning  to  blast  error,  to  make  the  world 
an  armory :  the  independent  and  original  energy  by  which 
nevertheless  the  character  acts  freely  and  naturally  :  the  power 
of  saying,  deliberately  and  irreversibly,  No ;  the  tenderness 
that  often  wept ;  reverence  toward  God,  respect  toward  man, 
love  toward  all : — we  can  assert  for  him  each  of  these. 

The  balancing  of  hope  and  apprehension  is  an  important 
consideration  in  the  elimination  of  character.  It  seems,  as  we 
once  before  remarked,  a  providential  arrangement  that  hope 
generally  prevails  in  the  noblest  and  greatest  minds.  Chal- 
mers was  siumy  in  his  whole  nature.  Fear  plays  a  very 
slight  part  in  his  mental  or  external  history.  It  had  a  small 
share  in  his  conversion ;  it  was  rather  the  conviction  that  the 
remedy  needed  for  the  world  was  deeper  than  he  had  formerly 
deemed,  the  holiness  without  which  a  man  can  not  see  God, 
something  above  the  virtue  of  philosophy,  which  led  to  that 
great  change.  And  in  all  his  works  there  are  cheerfulness, 
hope,  courage — ^no  touch  of  despondency  or  misanthropy. 
Yet  his  mind  was  of  no  flimsy,  romantic  cast.  He  knew  the 
world  was  a  stern  reality,  with  ribs  of  rock  and  veins  of  iron, 
not  to  be  softened  and  tamed  into  perpetual  mildness  and  do- 
cility by  poet,  pedant,  or  philosopher.  He  had  enough  of 
hope  to  make  him  work  cheerfully  and  indefatigably  ;  he  had 
enough  of  fear,  of  soberness  and  apprehension,  to  avert  despair 
at  the  results  of  his  work. 

"  The  king-becoming  graces, 
As  justice,  verity,  temperance,  stableness. 
Bounty,  perseverance,  mercy,  lowliness. 
Devotion,  patience,  courage,  fortitude," 

were  all  in  some  measure  his ;  and  in  him  they  flowed  from 
the  only  Source  from  which  they  can  flow  in  strength  and  purity. 


478  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

If  required  to  give  his  radical  characteristic  in  one  word,  we 
should  say,  that,  as  man  and  as  thinker,  he  was  a  great  mass 
of  common  sense.  He  had  a  giant's  grasp  of  the  fundamental 
facts  of  man's  existence,  an  inborn  notion  how  this  world  is 
put  together ;  he  was  not  the  man  to  build  you  metaphysical 
palaces,  mist  skillfully  tinted  by  moonshine,  or  to  lead  you, 
with  clear  small  safety -lamp,  through  argumentative  mazes ; 
but  he  had  a  profound  consciousness  of  those  unseen  principles 
by  which  men  actually  live  and  work ;  he  was  a  man,  we  de- 
liberately say  it,  against  whom  a  nation  might  lean.  To  use 
a  comparison  applied  by  himself  in  the  case  of  Edward  Irving, 
he  was  a  force  of  gravitation,  not  of  magnetism. 

And  his  books,  which  it  is  unnecessary  to  review,  are  dis- 
tinguished in  a  manner  correspondent  to  this.  They  were 
now  round  him  in  many  substantial  volumes,  and  more  were 
to  be  given  to  the  world  after  his  death.  They  embodied  that 
grand  idea  which  lent  sublimity  to  his  life,  the  union  of 
humanity  with  Christianity,  the  omnipotence,  in  the  man  and 
in  the  nation,  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus.  He  is  the  king  of  prac- 
tical theologians.  Those  books  do  not  abound  with  learned 
disquisitions  or  erudite  quotations ;  but  they  take  bold  broad 
views  of  man  and  his  salvation,  and  they  burn  all  over  with 
the  blended  fire  of  lofty  human  emotion  and  lowly  Christian 
faith.  If  you  do  not  fmd  in  them  the  delicacies  of  a  minute  in- 
genuity, or  the  meager  exactness  of  logical  formula,  you  meet 
with  those  great  ideas  which  may  be  called  the  Jtey  ideas  in 
systems  of  religion,  ethics,  and  polity  ;  with  which,  if  your 
hand  is  not  specially  weak,  you  can  solve,  far  and  wdde,  the 
practical  problems  of  life.  It  has  been  objected  that  they  are 
filled  with  iteration,  and  their  style  has  often  been  called  de- 
clamatory.    There   is   doubtless   something  in   the   charges. 


THOMAS     CHALMERS.  479 

But  it  should  be  remembered  that  Chalmers  was  by  insthict 
an  enforcer,  a  preacher  of  truth ;  he  would  flhig  thunderbolt 
on  tlumdcrbolt,  till  he  sent  one  fairly  home ;  he  looked  upon 
what  he  delivered  not  so  much  as  something  for  its  own  sake 
to  be  demonstrated,  as  what  was  to  tell  on  the  public  mind, 
and  be  impressed  upon  it  with  that  view.  He  wrote  with  the 
sound  of  the  world  in  his  ears ;  every  one  of  his  books  seems 
anchored  to  earth. 

At  last  his  earthly  Sabbath  came  to  an  end.  He  had  been 
in  London,  giving  evidence  before  a  committee  of  the  House 
of  Commons.  His  intellect,  as  this  evidence  testifies,  was  still 
clear  and  strong,  and  in  private  he  was  the  same  quiet  but 
genial  and  hearty  man  that  he  had  ever  been.  He  visited  Mr. 
Carlyle,  and  the  two  extraordinary  Scotchmen  had  an  acquies- 
cing and  cordial  conversation,  with  "  a  great  deal  of  laughing 
on  both  sides."  He  returned  to  Edinburgh  about  the  time 
when  the  Assembly  of  the  Free  Church  met ;  on  Friday,  May 
28,  1847. 

On  the  Sabbath  evening  that  followed,  he  was  more  than 
usually  benignant  and  genial ;  but  a  cloud  might  be  seen  to  flit 
across  his  features,  and  walking  in  the  garden  he  was  heard,  in 
low  but  very  earnest  tones,  saying,  "  O  Father,  my  Heavenly 
Father !"'  His  general  aspect,  however,  was  one  of  cheerful 
and  genial  composure. 

Next  day,  the  May  morning  rose  over  Arthur  Seat,  and  the 
Castle  rock,  and  the  spires  and  palaces  of  that  lordly  city 
which  he  loved  so  well.  Men  rose  bustling  after  the  Sunday 
rest,  and  the  conversation  in  town  would  turn  largely  on  the 
doings  of  the  two  assemblies,  and  the  appearance  he  was  to 
make  that  day.  But  as  the  hours  wore  on  a  whisper  stole 
over  the  city,  stopping  for  a  moment  every  breath :  Chalmers 


480  THOMAS     CHALMERS. 

was  dead.  One  had  entered  his  room  in  the  morning  and 
found  him  motionless:  "he  sat  there,  half  erect,  his  head  re- 
clining gently  on  his  pillow ;  the  expression  of  his  countenance 
that  of  fixed  and  majestic  repose."  The  land  mourned  for 
him,  as  Judah  and  Israel  mourned  for  the  good  kings  of  old. 


PART    THREE. 


OUTLOOK 


SI 


CHAPTER  I. 

*  THE     POSITIVE     PHILOSOPHY. 

In  the  first  part  of  this  work,  we  made  reference  to  that 
modern  school  of  infidelity  which  holds  of  pantheism ;  and.  in 
succeeding  portions,  we  have  mainly  endeavored  to  combat  its 
views  and  tendencies.  But  there  is  another  school  of  infidel- 
ity, to  which  we  have  but  alluded  in  passing,  and  which, 
whether  from  the  magnitude  of  its  pretensions,  the  talent  of 
its  disciples,  or  the  appalling  completeness  of  its  results,  de- 
serves consideration.  We  mean  the  school  of  Auguste  Comte, 
the  far-famed  Positive  Pliilosophy.  To  it  we  devote  the  pres- 
ent chapter. 

We  found  the  essential  characteristic  of  modern  pantheism 
to  be  an  assertion  of  the  divinity  of  man.  Somewhat  of  study 
and  reflection  was  necessary  to  assure  us  of  this.  But  in  the 
case  of  the  Positive  Philosophy  there  is  no  such  labor  necessa- 
ry :  it  wears  its  distinctive  dogma  written  on  its  brow.  The 
ancient  Jewish  high-priest  wore  on  his  forehead,  as  a  sign  be- 
fore which  armies  and  emperors  should  bow  down,  the  mystic 
name  of  Jehovah :  this  philosophy  bears  as  its  badge  the  ex 
press  and  conclusive  legend.  There  is  no  God. 

We  have  said  that  we  had,  in  the  preceding  pages,  but 
alluded  to  the  atheistic  science  of  Comte.  Though  not,  how- 
ever, naming  either  him  or  his  philosophy,  we  have  already, 
we  have  no  hesitation  in  asserting,  come  into  the  neighborhood 


484  THE     POSITIVE     PHILOSOPHY. 

of  both.  We  have  known  them  in  their  prototypes.  For  M. 
Comte,  we  had  the  Baron  D'Holbach ;  for  the  Positive  Philos- 
ophy, the  System  of  Nature.  We  institute  no  individual  com- 
parison between  D'Holbach  and  Comte ;  we  should  think  it 
beyond  doubt  that  the  latter  was  by  far  the  abler  man  ;  but, 
in  their  respective  systems,  no  one,  we  think,  can  fail  to  per- 
ceive an  essential  similarity,  beneath  a  partial  and  superficial 
difference.  The  point  from  which  they  start  is  the  same  ;  the 
goal  at  which  they  arrive  is  one :  their  general  method  is 
identical.  The  axiom  from  which  they  set  out  is,  that  nothing 
is  to  be  believed  save  what  is  seen,  heard,  handled  ;  the  com- 
mon goal  is  atheism  ;  the  method  is  that  of  physical  science. 
The  advance  of  knowledge  has  occasioned  considerable  change 
in  the  general  aspect  and  finish  of  the  edifice  of  scientific 
atheism ;  what  D'Holbach  conceived  to  be  an  exhibition  of 
the  physical  origin  of  life,  has  proved  to  be  a  childish  mistake ; 
a  great  deal,  probably,  of  sentimental  foolery,  about  suicide 
and  the  like,  has  been,  as  faded  drapery,  put  aside  ;  the  walls 
have  been  newly  overlaid  with  scientific  mortar,  tempered  by 
modern  enlightenment ;  the  whole  has  been  refitted,  according 
to  the  most  improved  modern  methods,  with  an  utter  regard- 
lessness  to  expense.  But  the  very  fact  of  these  recent  amend- 
ments and  repairs  might  have  suggested  that  it  was  the  old 
house,  freshly  swept  and  garnished,  in  w^hich  a  new  crew  had 
come  to  habit.  The  universal  appearance  and  proclamation 
of  system — the  endless  ranges  of  pillars,  the  countless  museum- 
cases,  the  perpetual  diagrams,  the  reiterated  profession  of 
power  to  explain  all  things  and  annihilate  wonder — might 
have  led  us  to  suspect  that  the  spirit  of  D'Holbach  (if  it  is 
not  an  insult  to  the  man  to  suppose  he  had  a  spirit)  reigned 
within. 

The  original  axiom  of  the  Positive  Philosophy  is,  that  the 


THE    POSITIVE    rniLOSOPHT.  485 

immaterial  exists  not,  that  sense  is  the  sole  source  of  evidence. 
Allcghig  that  man  can  not  prove  the  existence  of  a  Divino 
Being,  or  of  a  spirit,  refusing  to  believe  aught  which  can  not 
be  defined  in  language  and  precisely  comprehended  in  thought, 
its  advocates  prefer  the  alternative  of  utterly  denying  the  ex- 
istence of  an  invisible  world,  and  a  system  of  spiritual  rela- 
tions connecting  man  therewith,  to  that  of  accepting  instinct, 
listening  to  fliith,  or  bowing  to  revelation. 

It  might  be  interesting  to  trace,  in  a  few  departments,  the 
mode  in  which  this  philosophy  would  take  practical  manifesta- 
tion. We  are  unable  here  to  do  more  than  indicate  the  method 
in  which  the  reader  may  work  out  a  whole  scheme  of  its  ope- 
ration. Its  general  effect  w^ould  be  to  circumscribe  every  prov- 
ince of  affairs  :  to  cabin,  crib,  confine  the  spirit  of  social  life : 
to  limit  advancement  to  one  path,  to  turn  the  eye  of  man  to 
earth,  to  pronounce  those  mighty  hopes  which  have  been  said 
to  make  us  men,  mere  toys  of  the  nursery.  If  it  retained  the 
word  duty,  it  would  restrict  its  operation  entirely  to  that  be- 
tween man  and  man ;  duty  would  become  synonymous  with 
interest,  and  conscience  with  calculation  ;  the  decalogue  would 
be  a  series  of  arithmetical  conclusions.  There  would  be  a 
great  enumeration  of  motives ;  but  they  would  all  have  one 
characteristic ;  they  would  hint  of  their  father's  house  by 
always  whispering  the  word  system.  They  would  be  cut  and 
squared,  weighed  and  measured,  committed  to  memory  and 
carefully  remembered ;  they  would  never  kindle  the  eye  or 
flush  the  cheek,  they  would  have  none  of  that  inspiring  indefi 
niteness,  of  that  animating  suggestion  of  something  infinite, 
which  has  ever  roused  and  supported  men ;  they  would  all  be 
known,  ticketed,  and  brought  out  for  use,  as  methodically  as  a 
gardener's  tools  or  a  grocer's  measures  :  for  this  is  the  science 
that  knows,  and  sees,  and  annihilates  alike  the  weakness  of  en- 


486  THE     POSITIVE    PHILOSOPHY. 

thusiasm  and  the  weakness  of  hope.  The  moralist  and  the 
political  economist  would  become  almost  the  same  :  the  one 
might  more  particularly  devote  himself  to  investigate  the 
mode  in  which  commercial  equity  might  have  full  action,  how 
each  man  might  have  his  own ;  the  other  might  direct  special 
attention  to  the  means  of  obtaining  most  to  be  divided  :  the 
commission  of  each  would  emanate  from  the  shop.  And  so 
you  would  have  a  science  of  political  economy  not  undeserv- 
ing the  name  of  the  "  dismal  science ;"  for  it  would  proceed  on 
the  supposition,  that,  when  you  had  classified  a  few  of  the  facts 
of  man's  existence,  and  the  laws  by  which  they  are  connected, 
you  had  reached  the  secret  of  government  and  prosperity,  you 
could  wind  up  the  clock  at  pleasure  :  however  far  it  went,  and 
it  might  embrace  much  important  matter,  it  could  never  go 
further  than  the  philosophy,  of  which  it  was  an  offshoot,  goes 
with  the  individual  man ;  it  might  admirably  lay  bare  and  ex- 
plain the  mechanism  of  society,  but  it  would  altogether  ignore 
the  soul  of  society.  What  would  be  the  fate  of  religion  1  It 
had  been  one  of  the  great  mistakes  and  delusions  of  the  human 
race ;  but,  if  there  still  subsisted  aught  to  take  the  name,  it 
would  be  the  obligation  of  the  social  contract,  or  whatever  it 
might  be  which  bound  men  to  the  State ;  its  high-priest  would 
be  the  hangman.  How  would  this  philosophy  affect  friend- 
ship 1  It  would  narrow  it  to  those  sympathies  which  are  pres- 
ent, seen,  calculable;  it  would  change  it  into  copartnery. 
The  Platonic  friendship  originated  when  two  persons  were 
knit  by  the  sympathy  of  a  common  ardor  in  the  pursuit  of 
truth ;  they  sat  beside  each  other,  and  strove  jointly  to  keep 
the  head  of  the  snow-white  steed  toward  the  heavenly  dwelling 
of  perfection,  and  to  curb  the  base  black  horse  that  ever  strove 
earthward  ;  but  friends  according  to  the  Positive  Philosophy, 
would  unyoke  the  celestial  courser  altogether,  and  be  united 


THE     POSITIVE     PniLOSOPHY.  48Y 

by  the  sympathy  of  a  common  desire  to  break  the  passion 
steed  well  in,  that  it  might  go  softly  in  the  provision-cart. 

Thus  we  might  proceed ;  noting  how  all  human  things  are 
by  the  Positive  Philosophy  circumscribed,  diminished,  cramp- 
ed. "VVe  ask  no  more,  in  order  to  impart  to  us  perfect  confi- 
dence in  so  proceeding,  than  the  original  axiom,  that  sense  is 
the  only  source  of  evidence,  that  the  immaterial  does  not  exist, 
that  every  motive  and  sympathy  is  defined  and  bounded  by 
the  cradle  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  grave  on  the  other.  We 
are  very  far  from  asserting  that  all  who,  more  or  less,  favoi 
the  doctrines  of  Comte  would  go  this  length ;  the  atmosphere 
of  the  world  still  retains  too  much  of  the  old  taint  of  religion 
and  metaphysics  to  render  that  possible ;  and,  as  we  have 
said,  whatever  its  defects,  its  disciples  can  point  to  what  seems 
a  goodly  amount  of  actual  attainment,  of  solid  work,  on  the 
part  of  positive  science.  Yet,  if  the  expressly  negative  nature 
of  all  its  reasoning  is  borne  in  mind,  and  the  strictly  logical 
result  of  its  method  accepted,  it  can  not,  we  think,  be  alleged 
that  we  misrepresent. 

To  this  there  will,  perhaps,  be  yielded  a  more  cordial  assent, 
when  we  endeavor,  in  a  few  sentences,  to  trace  in  outline  that 
achievement  which  is  aimed  at  by  the  Positive  Philosophy. 
This  is  the  more  necessary,  because,  in  order  to  address  any 
effective  argument  to  the  advocates  of  an  opinion,  we  must 
learn  what  recommends  it  to  their  sympathies,  and,  in  order 
to  vindicate  truth,  we  must  know  the  most  formidable  aspect 
of  error. 

Let  us  suppose,  then,  that  it  has  accomplished  all  which  it 
professes  its  power  to  achieve.  Agricultural  science  has  done 
its  work.  The  most  rugged  soil  has  yielded  to  the  skill  of 
man.  The  unwholesome  and  barren  marsh  has  been  drained 
and  plowed  ;  where  once  it  was,  the  corn  now  waves,  or  the 


488  THE     POSITIVE     PHILOSOPHY. 

rich  meadow,  amid  whose  flowers  the  bees  are  humming,  and 
where  sheep  and  cattle  stray,  spreads  out  beautiful  in  the 
noonday  sun.  To  the  top  of  the  mountain  the  plow  has  been 
carried,  and  the  eternal  snows  and  tempests  have  seen  their 
ancient  domain  curtailed  by  the  power  of  chemistry  and  me- 
chanics. The  world  has  burst  forth  in  opulence  of  crop,  and 
fruit,  and  flower,  and  the  glad  light  that  rests  above  it  more 
than  realizes  the  vision  of  the  golden  age.  Commerce  has 
done  its  work.  The  tempest  of  the  deep  has  at  length  been 
bridled  and  subdued  by  man ;  science  went  to  watch  the  mon- 
ster in  the  homeless  tracts  where  he  sought  his  prey,  and 
learned  at  last  to  trace  his  footstep,  to  know  his  approach, 
and  to  balk  his  utmost  might.  Each  soil  produces,  to  the 
full  of  scientific  culture,  what  it  is  naturally  fitted  to  grow ; 
and  a  universal  free  trade  and  perfection  of  transmission  have 
put  the  production  of  every  soil  within  the  reach  of  the  in- 
habitant of  every  other,  as  if  it  grew  at  his  own  door.  Loco- 
motion has  been  fully  developed  ;  internal  communication  has 
reached  a  perfection  which  renders  it  but  a  slight  figure  that 
time  and  space  are  annihilated.  History  and  political  science 
have  been  perfected.  The  past  has  yielded  all  its  secrets  to 
tireless  research  and  penetrative  criticism :  the  philosopher 
can  look  back  on  the  prospect  of  the  bygone  ages,  and  see, 
clearly  bodied  forth,  the  work  and  warring,  the  joy  and  sor- 
row, all  the  varied  pageantry,  of  all  generations.  The  light 
of  political  economy  has  risen  high  and  burned  bright,  fed 
with  oil  by  the  sister  science  of  history.  The  inducements 
which  wealth  can  bring  to  bear  on  man  have  all  been  summed, 
the  means  of  its  production  and  the  laws  of  its  distribution 
ascertained,  and  the  all-embracing  doctrine  of  social  existence 
fully  promulgated  and  enforced,  that  if  all  work  peacefully  in 
their  several  stations,  each  will  obtam  the  greatest  amount 


THE     POSITIVE    PIIILOBOPHY.  489 

possible  of  food  and  clothing.  Tlie  mnscum  of  the  world  has 
been  finally  furnished  and  arranged,  the  storehouse  of  the 
world  filled,  the  movements  of  the  stars  set  forth  in  geometric 
diagrams,  the  exhaustive  system  of  the  Positive  Pliilosophy 
completed. 

We  shall  grant  that,  if  our  attempt  has  failed,  it  is  yet  as- 
suredly possible  to  draw  a  picture  of  the  ultimate  attainment 
of  physical  science,  which,  realizable  or  not,  will  have  an  im- 
posing aspect.  Let  it  be  added,  also,  that  the  whole  is  put  in, 
not  in  the  gaudy  colors  of  romance,  or  with  the  delusive  license 
of  poetry  ;  the  positive  philosopher  makes  no  demand  on  your 
enthusiasm,  but,  for  that  very  reason,  claims  the  more  ready 
accordance  of  your  belief  The  air  is  pervaded  by  philosophic 
calm  :  the  professor  deals  solely  in  demonstration,  the  pupils 
talk  in  formula.  It  is  not  to  us  inexplicable  that  the  Positive 
Philosophy  enjoys  its  popularity. 

But,  when  we  have  exhausted  all  that  can  be  said  in  favor 
of  the  school  of  positive  atheism,  we  must  hold  by  our  original 
assertion,  that  its  tendency  is  to  discrown  man,  and  to  take  the 
light  off  the  universe.  What  is  all  this  wealth,  what  all  this 
power  which  it  offers  1  They  are,  at  the  very  best,  the  bribe 
which  earth  offers  to  the  human  being,  to  induce  him  to  deny 
his  celestial  origin  and  barter  his  spiritual  inheritance.  What 
is  all  that  fabric,  rising  in  its  still  and  cold  magnificence,  cover- 
ing the  earth  and  shutting  out  the  heaven  ?  It  is  a  magnificent 
tomb  for  the  spirit  of  man.  Deck  it  as  you  will,  let  the  flags 
of  all  the  sciences  float  over  it,  it  is  but  an  ornamented  grave. 
And  if  you  tell  me  that  creatures  still  move  about  within  it,  I 
will  refuse  to  call  those  living  men  who  declare  themselves 
"  cunning  casts  in  clay,"  and  profess  that  the  souls  are  out  of 
them.  The  mummies  in  the  pyramids  wear  the  human  form, 
yet  we  do  not  call  them  men.  The  password  into  that  fabric 
21  * 


490  THE    POSITIVE     PHILOSOPHY. 

IS  an  insult,  the  bitterest  of  insults,  to  man  ;  it  supposes  that 
it  is  possible  to  find  food  so  abundant  and  clothing  so  rare,  that 
it  will  woo  him  to  abdicate  his  spiritual  throne,  and  declare 
himself  an  animal.  We  would  not  give  the  delusion  of  religion 
for  all  the  realization  of  the  philosophy  of  Comte  !  Where  it 
comes,  all  waxes  dim  :  its  foot  blackens  the  stars.  For  why- 
should  I  care  to  look  to  these  stars,  if  they  are  but  a  mockery 
of  my  little  day  of  life  1  or  why  should  I  delight  to  search  into 
the  beauty  and  the  bounty  of  the  earth  around  me,  if  it  gives 
me  but  a  table  and  a  grave,  and,  by  instilling  into  my  veins 
some  maddening  poison,  has  left  me  the  possibility  of  imagining 
for  myself  a  better  fate  ?  Physical  science  itself,  which,  when 
subordinate  to  higher  ends,  I  can  cultivate  and  prize,  is  ruined 
utterly  by  this  pretentious  but  fatal  alliance :  in  the  words  of 
Chalybeeus,  it  either  becomes  the  handmaid  of  a  poor  curiosity, 
or  a  "  partner  of  trade." 

How  deeply  melancholy  is  the  life  of  man,  if  he  has  no  in- 
heritance in  the  past  or  the  future  ;  if  there  are  no  mighty  na- 
tions of  the  dead;  if  the  friends  he  has  loved  are  loathsome 
clay,  and  between  himself  and  annihilation  there  is  but  a 
breath!  How  all  the  dewy  umbrage  of  his  sympathies  is 
withered,  the  fountains  of  his  heart  dried  up  !  A  man  comes 
upon  the  world  with  mighty  powers,  capable  of  exerting  an 
influence  which  will  outlive  his  day  by  millenniads.  He  stands 
in  his  own  little  generation,  but  by  some  strange  destiny,  his 
mind's  dwelling  is  all  time ;  on  his  own  little  world,  but  his 
mind's  dwelling  is  immensity.  He  acts,  or  thinks,  or  sings. 
If  he  has  planned  an  Alexandria  or  a  Babylon,  he  must  pass 
away  ere  its  streets  and  quays  are  ranged  in  the  order  in 
which  his  mind's  eye  saw  them ;  if  he  has  desolated  realms,  he 
must  pass  away  ere  nature,  weeping  over  them  in  rain,  and 
smiling  in  sunshine,  wraps  them  again  in  soothing  green.     If 


THE     POSITIVE     PUILOSOPHY.  491 

he  has  pondered,  half  a  lifetime,  on  the  state  and  the  destinies 
of  man,  and  reared  some  theory  to  renovate  and  save  his  race, 
he  must  depart  ere  any  save  its  initial  effects  are  seen.  If  he 
have  sung  some  mighty  song,  which  has  taken  the  ear  of  the 
ages,  and  to  wliich,  with  the  noLle  pride  of  genius,  he  can  see 
generation  after  generation,  through  the  long  vista  of  years, 
pausing  to  listen,  he  must  himself  lie  down  and  die  when  per- 
haps only  a  few  bosoms  have  thrilled  to  its  music.  Man  here  has 
only  time  to  do  his  work,  and  dig  his  grave.  If  he  can  believe 
that  all  the  buried  generations  have  gone  onward  to  another 
state  of  existence,  and  if  he  can  himself  look  forward  to  a  pro- 
tracted life,  in  which  he  will  retain  his  personality,  his  connec- 
tion with  humanity,  and  that  interest  in  all  things  human  which 
marked  the  range  of  his  humanity  here,  he  may  work  in  the 
sense  of  inducements  really  sublime  and  penalties  really  awful. 
But  how  he  shrivels  m  the  glance  of  the  Positive  Philosophy. 
Man  the  animal  were  a  pitiful  and  anomalous  thing,  all  whose 
grandeur  arose  from  delusion  ;  a  dreamer  of  empire  in  a  tene- 
ment of  clay :  man  the  spirit  wanders  through  eternity,  and  is 
formed  verily  in  the  image  of  God. 

We  shall  not  formally  and  at  length  assail  the  Positive  Phi- 
losophy. We  presume  that  the  reasoning  by  which  material- 
ism is  to  be  overthrown  is  now  pretty  well  elaborated,  and 
that  it  does  not  admit  of  important  addition,  that  a  man  may 
now  sum  up  and  balance  the  arguments  for  and  against,  with 
conviction  pretty  well  assured,  that  none  others  of  importance 
are  to  be  adduced.  We  shall,  however,  bring  against  this 
latest  form  of  materialism  one  argument  which  we  deem  amply 
sufficient  to  overthrow  it,  and  which,  from  the  great  educational 
pretensions  of  the  science  of  Comte,  has  a  speciality  of  appli- 
cation to  it  which  is  a  true  originality.  We,  indeed,  are  not 
the  first  so  to  apply  it ;  the  metaphysician  of  the  day  has  vir- 


492  THE     POSITIVE     PHILOSOPHY. 

tually  done  so,  and  we  shelter  ourselves  under  his  shield.  It 
is  the  argument  that  the  Positive  Philosophy,  like  every  sys- 
tem of  materialism,  really  cuts  away  its  own  ground,  that  the 
more  it  acquires  the  less  it  can  enjoy ;  that  it  inevitably  weak- 
ens the  human  mind ;  that  it  might  be  represented  by  a  de- 
ceiving magician,  who  offered  to  his  dupe  a  magnificent  estate, 
alleging  that  he  had  merely  to  till  and  enjoy  it,  while  there 
lurked  in  the  soil  some  fatal  necromantic  power  to  palsy  the 
arm  that  turned  it,  and  deaden  the  palate  which  tasted  its 
fruit. 

Sir  William  Hamilton,  in  allusion  to  the  effect  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  Condillac  in  France,  a  philosophy  essentially  the 
same  as  Comte's,  in  silencing  discussion  and  rendering  philos- 
ophy synonymous  with  the  observation  and  comparison  of  phys- 
ical phenomena,  has  the  following  passage  : 

"  Nor  would  such  a  result  have  been  desirable,  had  the  one 
exclusive  opinion  been  true,  as  it  was  false ;  innocent,  as  it  was 
corruptive.  If  the  accomplishment  of  philosophy  imply  a  ces- 
sation of  discussion,  if  the  result  of  speculation  be  a  paralysis 
of  itself;  the  consummation  of  knowledge  is  the  condition  of 
intellectual  barbarism.  Plato  has  profoundly  defined  man, 
'  the  hunter  of  truth  ;'  for  in  this  chase,  as  in  others,  the  pur- 
suit is  all  in  all,  the  success  comparatively  nothing.  '  Did  the 
Almighty,'  says  Lessing,  '  holding  in  his  right  hand  Truth^  and 
in  his  left  Search  after  Truth,  deign  to  proffer  me  the  one,  I 
might  prefer — in  all  humility,  but  without  hesitation,  I  should 
request — Search  after  Truth."*  We  exist  only  as  we  energize ; 
pleasure  is  the  reflex  of  unimpeded  energy ;  energy  is  the  mean 
by  which  our  faculties  are  developed ;  and  a  higher  energy  the 
end  which  their  development  proposes.  In  action  is  thus  con- 
tained the  existence,  happiness,  improvement,  and  perfection 
of  our  being ;  and  knowledge  is  only  precious,  as  it  may  afford 


THE     POSITIVE     PIIILOSOPHY.  493 

a  stimulus  to  the  exercise  of  our  powers,  and  the  condition  of 
their  more  complete  activity.  Speculative  truth  is,  therefore, 
subordinate  to  speculation  itself;  and  its  value  is  directly 
measured  by  the  quantity  of  energy  which  it  occasions — im- 
mediately in  its  discovery — mediately  through  its  consequen- 
ces. Life  to  Endymion  was  not  preferable  to  death ;  aloof 
from  practice,  a  waking  error  is  better  than  the  sleeping  truth. 
Neither,  in  point  of  flict,  is  there  found  any  proportion  between 
the  possession  of  truths,  and  the  develo]?ment  of  the  mind  in 
which  they  are  deposited.  Every  learner  in  science  is  now 
familiar  with  more  truth  than  Aristotle  or  Plato  ever  dreamt 
of  knowing ;  yet,  compared  with  the  Stagyrite  or  the  Athenian, 
how  few,  among  our  masters  of  modern  science,  rank  higher  than 
intellectual  barbarians  !  Ancient  Greece  and  modern  Europe 
prove,  indeed,  that  '  the  march  of  intellect'  is  no  inseparable 
concomitant  of  '  the  march  of  science ;'  that  the  cultivation  of 
the  individual  is  not  to  be  rashly  confounded  with  the  progress 
of  the  species. 

"  But,  if  the  possession  of  theoretical  fiicts  be  not  converti- 
ble with  mental  improvement,  and  if  the  former  be  important 
merely  as  subservient  to  the  latter,  it  follows,  that  the  com- 
parative utility  of  a  study  is  not  to  be  principalhj  estimated 
by  the  complement  of  truths  which  it  may  communicate,  but 
by  the  degree  in  which  it  determines  our  higher  capacities  to 
action.         *         *         *        * 

*'  On  this  ground  (which  we  have  not  been  able  fully  to 
state,  far  less  adequately  to  illustrate),  we  rest  the  pre-eminent 
utility  of  metaphysical  speculations.  That  they  comprehend 
all  the  sublimest  objects  of  our  theoretical  and  moral  interest ; 
that  every  (natural)  conclusion  concerning  God,  the  soul,  the 
present  worth,  and  the  future  destiny  of  man,  is  exclusively 
metaphysical,  will  be  at  once  admitted.     But  we  do  not  found 


494  THE     POSITIVE    PHILOSOPHY. 

the  importance  on  the  paramount  dignity  of  the  pursuit.  It  is 
as  the  best  gymnastic  of  the  mind,  as  a  mean,  principally  and 
almost  exclusively  conducive  to  the  highest  education  of  our 
noblest  powers,  that  we  would  vindicate  to  these  speculations 
the  necessity  which  has  too  frequently  been  denied  them.  By 
no  other  intellectual  application  (and  least  of  all  by  physical 
pursuits),  is  the  soul  thus  reflected  on  itself,  and  the  faculties 
concentered  in  such  independent,  vigorous,  unwonted,  and  con- 
tinued energy ;  by  none,  therefore,  are  its  best  capacities  so 
variously  and  intensely  evolved.  '  Where  there  is  most  life, 
there  is  the  victory.' " 

We  shall  not  say  that  we  unreservedly  subscribe  to  each 
particular  clause  in  this  powerful  passage ;  but  we  hold  that  it 
furnishes  an  overpowering  argument  against  the  Positive  Phi- 
losophy. That  philosophy  annihilates  a  hemisphere  of  human, 
thought  and  endeavor ;  and  the  hemisphere  which  it  annihilates 
is  that  in  which  all  the  sublime  constellations  burn.  It  can  be 
necessary  to  add  no  word  on  the  value  of  metaphysics  as  a 
discipline  of  mind ;  but  a  few  words  may  not  be  out  of  place 
to  suggest  the  corresponding  value  of  religion. 

The  Positive  Philosophy  is  explicit  in  its  denunciation  both 
of  the  former  and  of  the  latter ;  religion  was  the  first  great 
human  delusion,  metaphysics  was  the  second :  the  course  of 
humanity,  according  to  it,  has  been  that  of  the  North  Ameri- 
can Indian,  who,  as  he  gradually  imbibes  ideas  and  forms  hab- 
its of  civilization,  lays  aside,  one  by  one,  the  bits  of  painted 
glass,  and  the  strings  of  beads,  and  the  gaudy  feathers,  which 
were  erewhile  his  glory ;  we  should  rather,  on  its  hypothesis, 
say,  that  it  was  that  of  the  monarch,  who  ruled  well,  and  looked 
proudly,  in  his  youth  and  manhood,  but  on  whom  the  dotage 
of  age  came,  and  who  laid  aside  his  diadem,  and  unclasped 
his  royal  robe,  and  shut  himself  into  a  grave  that  he  had  hewn 


THE     POSITIVE     PHILOSOPHY.  495 

for  himself  in  a  rock.  If  wc  might  venture  on  indicating  a 
difference  and  relation,  more  or  less  partial  and  strict,  between 
the  nature  and  influence  of  the  mental  gymnastic  of  metaphys- 
ics, and  what  results  from  that  element  in  religion  which  is  not 
of  the  nature  of  a  truth  discovered,  but  of  a  truth  accepted, 
not  of  reason  but  of  faith,  we  should  say  it  might  be  figured 
by  the  difference  and  relation  between  light  and  heat,  between 
truth  and  beauty,  between  strength  and  gentleness.  The  moral 
world,  alleges  the  positive  philosopher,  requires  no  Sun.  Not 
so,  answers  the  metaphysician,  for  then  there  were  no  light,  no 
knowledge ;  what  you  call  Positive  Science,  when  taken  alone, 
is  no  knowledge  at  all.  Not  so,  answers  the  religious  man, 
for  then  there  were  no  heat ;  the  culinary  fire  of  your  provision 
shop,  the  Plutonic  fire  of  your  furnaces,  will  never  array  earth 
in  its  summer  raiment,  or  cause  its  face  to  break  into  its  sum- 
mer smile.  And  if  metaphysical  training  makes  man  intel- 
lectually strong,  religion  is  required  to  give  him  a  beauty  and 
a  gentleness.  We  found  pantheism  wrap  man  in  a  mail  of 
pride,  wliich  we  could  pronounce  none  other  than  a  mail  of 
madness.  Positive  Science  seems  to  make  man  very  humble, 
but  it  too  leaves  him  proud ;  only  the  pride  of  pantheism  was 
that  of  a  monarch  "svho  said  he  was  well  enough,  and  required 
no  aid  from  God ;  that  of  atheism  is  the  pride  of  him  who,  though 
beggared,  prefers  living  on  husks  to  returning  to  his  Father. 

There  must  not  be  taken  from  man  the  belief  in  an  Infinite ; 
in  that  belief  alone  can  his  whole  nature  be  developed  and 
displayed :  thus  alone  does  he  find  the  humility  that  does  not 
degrade  him,  and  the  honor  that  makes  him  not  proud,  the 
faith  that  clothes  him  in  strength,  and  the  reverence  that 
breathes  over  his  face  a  softened  majesty,  the  love  that  makes 
him  a  fellow  of  angels,  and  the  fear  that  reminds  him  he  is 
still  on  the  earth,  the  blessing  that  breathes  tenderly  on  his 


496  THE     POSITIVE    PHILOSOPHY. 

pathway  here,  and  the  hope  that  beckons  from  the  golden  -walls. 
There  is  a  beauty  in  the  face  of  man  when  his  God  smiles  on 
it,  as  on  the  face  of  the  babe  in  his  cradle  on  which  a  father 
looks  in  joy,  which  must  not  be  taken  away.  There  is  an 
earnestness  in  the  heart  and  life  of  a  man,  when  he  knows  that 
the  eye  of  the  Eternal  is  on  him,  which  must  not  be  foregone. 
There  is  an  eternity  of  consequence  in  every  act  of  an  immor- 
tal, which  he  can  not  deny  and  continue  to  work.  The  finite 
being  staggers  in  bewilderment  when  separated  from  the  hi- 
finite ;  he  can  not  stand  alone  in  the  universe ;  he  can  not  de- 
fame his  spirit  without  darkening  it,  he  can  not  scorn  faith 
without  weakening  reason,  he  can  not  deny  God  and  reach  the 
full  strength  and  expansion  of  his  faculties  as  a  man.  Cole- 
ridge says  truly  that  religion  makes  all  glorious  on  which  it 
looks.  How  poor  the  education  for  my  highest  faculties,  ob- 
tained by  going  round  the  world  to  learn  in  what  order  its 
phenomena  are  ranged,  and  discover,  as  my  highest  reward, 
new  food  to  eat  and  new  raiment  wherewithal  I  may  be 
clothed !  How  effectual  and  sublime  is  the  education  I  receive 
in  the  survey,  if  every  object  I  meet  is  gifted  with  a  power  of 
exhaustless  suggestion,  and  every  leaf  of  the  forest  and  star  of 
the  sky  is  a  commissioned  witness  for  God,  and  not  the  most 
careless  trill  of  woodland  melody,  no  chance  gleam  of  sunlight 
over  the  fountain  that  leaps  from  the  crag,  and  reckless  as  it 
is,  must  stay  to  reflect  in  its  rainbowed  loveliness  the  beauty 
of  heaven,  no  wild  wave  tossing  joyously  on  the  pathless  deep, 
but  has  power  to  call  into  action  my  highest  and  holiest  pow- 
ers, of  wonder,  of  reverence,  of  adoration  !  Could  no  other 
argument  be  brought  against  the  Positive  Philosophy,  than  the 
effect  it  would  necessarily  have  on  the  education  of  the  race,  by 
excluding,  so  to  speak,  religion  and  metaphysics  from  the  world- 
school,  it  were  argument  sufficient. 


THE    POSITIVE    PniLOSOPIIY.  49*7 

Listening  to  the  magniloquent  professions  of  this  philosophy, 
and  looking  at  the  results  to  which  it  may  in  some  sort  lay 
claim,  it  is  important  to  inquire  whether,  and  to  what  extent, 
its  teaching  is  likely  to  be  accompanied  with  success.  We 
must  not  omit,  however,,  to  remark,  that  the  atheistic  science 
can  nowise  lay  claim  to  the  whole  achievement  of  Baconian 
induction.  Physical  pursuits  managed  at  least  to  subsist  when 
unallied  with  atheism,  nay,  wx  suspect  that  even  for  them  the 
alliance  would  be  cramping  and  pernicious.  Bacon  denounced 
atheism  in  absolute  and  unmeasured  terms,  and  Newton  never 
turned  his  eye  toward  the  stars  without  looking  for  the  light 
of  God,  which  they  revealed. 

Of  the  ultimate  success  of  the  Positive  Philosophy  we  have 
no  fear.  Instinct  is  stronger  than  argument.  It  is  not  natural 
for  man  to  find  his  all  in  this  world.  The  gravitation  of  rea- 
soning beings  toward  the  moral  Sun  of  the  universe  is  too 
strong  to  be  permanently  or  altogether  broken.  Where  un- 
tutored man  acts  in  the  mere  strength  of  nature,  we  are  met 
by  spectacles  which,  however  sad,  have  one  element  of  sub- 
limity, in  that  they  bear  witness  to  man's  belief  in  his  spiritual 
nature ;  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale,  where  the  loftiest  intel- 
lects of  the  human  race  rest  in  the  solitude  of  greatness,  we 
receive  the  same  assurance.  If  I  visit  the  banks  of  some  lone 
Indian  river,  where  the  Hmdoo  superstition  still  reigns  supreme, 
I  find  I  have  not  yet  descended  to  a  rank  of  humanity  in  which 
an  invisible  world  is  denied  or  forgotten,  and  man  can  name  no 
motive  strong  enough  to  silence  the  remonstrances  or  to  defeat 
the  offers  of  sense.  The  widow  is  brought  out  to  die  on  the 
funeral  pile  of  her  husband.  I  may  weep  over  that  fair  form, 
in  its  simple  beauty,  where  the  blush  and  the  dimple  of  girlish 
hope  are  just  yielding  to  the  matron  smile  of  perfect  woman- 
hood, and  deem  it  all  too  lovely  for  the  embrace  of  fire.     But 


498  THE     POSITIVE    PHILOSOPHY. 

even  here  I  will  have  within  me  a  haughty  consolation,  and  I 
will  gaze  with  pride  in  my  melancholy,  because  that  here  also 
the  human  spirit  asserts  its  supremacy  over  pain  and  death, 
even  here,  for  duty  and  devotion,  a  weak  woman  can  die. 
And,  if  the  disciples  of  M.  Comte  tell  us  that  this  is  just  one 
of  those  spectacles  which  it  is  their  boast  to  do  away  with  for- 
ever, we  point  them,  as  we  said,  to  those  minds  v/hich  the  ac- 
clamations of  the  race  pronounce  the  greatest  and  best. 
While  men  gaze  in  revering  pride  toward  Plato,  and  honor 
the  lofty  contempt  with  which  Fichte  looked  down  on  the  joys  of 
sense,  while  there  is  rapture  in  the  eye  of  Poetry,  and  majesty 
on  the  brow  of  Philosophy,  sight  will  not  altogether  prevail 
against  faith,  the  sense  will  not,  with  its  foul  exhalations,  wholly 
choke  the  spirit.  Your  light  Anacreons,  and  careless  Horaces, 
and  frivolous  Moores  may  continue  to  sing ;  even  your  Gib- 
bons and  Humes  may  still  work ;  your  system-builders,  with 
ears  deafened  by  their  own  hammering  and  backs  bent  with 
stoopuig  to  their  own  toil,  will  not  cease  to  build ;  but  no 
Homer  or  Dante,  no  Shakespeare  or  Milton,  no  Coleridge  and, 
we  even  add,  no  Shelley,  will  sing  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Positive  Philosophy;  your  Fichte,  your  Carlyle,  your  De 
Quincey,  your  Tennyson,  your  Ruskin,  will  refuse  to  serve  na- 
ture on  such  conditions  ;  they  will  throw  up  their  commissions 
at  once.  What  men  have  deemed  best  deserving  of  the  name 
of  thought  would  expire. 

"Why  tliought?     To  toil,  and  eat, 
Then  make  our  bed  in  darkness,  needs  no  thought  '* 

We  have  been  told  that  immortality  inspires  the  lyric  Muse ; 
that  it  is  the  light  in  the  distance  which  kindles  her  eye ;  but 
now  her  song  would  be  a  funeral  dirge.  We  might  add  quo- 
tation to  quotation  from  our  poetry,  in  indefinitely  extended 


THE     POSITIVE     PHILOSOPHY.  499 

succession,  of  appeal  from  this  theory,  and  assertion  of  a  higher 
lot  for  man.     Young  exclaims,  as  if  in  anger, 

""Were  then  capacities  divine  conferr'd, 
As  a  mock-diadem,  in  savage  sport, 
Rank  insult  of  our  pompous  poverty, 
"Which  reaps  but  pain,  from  seeming  claims  so  fair?" 

Shelley,  with  all  his  profession  of  atheism,  shrinks  startled 
from  the  brink  of  annihilation  : — 

"  Shall  that  alone  which  knows 
Be  as  a  sword  burnt  up  before  the  sheath 
By  sightless  lightning?" 

Tennyson  expressly  alleges  he  would  not  stay  in  a  world 
where  the  demonstration  of  the  Positive  Philosophy  was  com- 
plete: he  would  not  confess  himself  and  his  fellows  to  be 
"  cunning  casts  in  clay  :" — ■ 

"Let  science  prove  we  are,  and  then 

"What  matters  science  unto  man, 
At  least,  to  me  ?    I  would  not  stay." 

We  suppose  the  following  stanza,  in  which  he  again  defines 
man,  on  the  hypothesis  that  he  is  no  more  than  an  animal,  and 
has  no  more  to  enjoy  or  look  to  than  the  pleasures  of  sense,  is 
one  of  the  finest  in  poetry  : — 

"  No  more  ?  a  monster,  then  a  dream, 
A  discord.     Dragons  of  the  prime. 
That  tear  each  other  in  their  slime, 
"Were  mellow  music  match'd  with  him." 

We  find,  in  a  poem  by  Coleridge,  which  is  not,  we  think, 


500  THE    POSITIVE    PHILOSOPHY. 

very  well  known,  a  general  estimate  of  the  absurdity  and  con- 
tradiction which  are  all  remaining  to  man  when  he  has  denied  his 
immaterial  and  immortal  existence.  We  must  be  excused  for 
quoting  it  at  length :  since  our  present  argument  has  reference 
to  the  sympathies  and  instincts  of  the  noble,  it  can  not  be  re- 
fused even  a  logical  value : — 

"If  dead,  we  cease  to  be  ;  if  total  gloom 

Swallow  up  life's  brief  flash  for  ay,  we  fare 
As  summer-gusts,  of  sudden  birth  and  doom, 

Whose  sound  and  motion  not  alone  declare. 
But  are  their  whole  of  being !     If  the  breath 

Be  life  itself,  and  not  its  task  and  tent, 
If  even  a  soul  like  Milton's  can  knoTv  death ; 

O  Man !  thou  vessel  purposeless,  unmeant, 
Yet  drone-hive  strange  of  phantom  purposes ! 

Surplus  of  nature's  dread  activity, 
Which,  as  she  gazed  on  some  nigh-finish'd  vase, 
Retreating  slow,  with  meditative  pause, 

She  form'd  with  restless  hands  unconsciously ! 
Blank  accident !  nothing's  anomaly ! 

If  rootless  thus,  thus  substanceless  thy  state, 
Go,  weigh  thy  dreams,  and  be  thy  hopes,  thy  fears. 
The  counter-weights ! — Thy  laughter  and  thy  tears 

Mean  but  themselves,  each  fittest  to  create, 
And  to  repay  the  other!     Why  rejoices 

Thy  heart  with  hollow  joy  for  hollow  good  ? 

Why  cowl  thy  face  beneath  the  mourner's  hood, 
Why  waste  thy  sighs,  and  thy  lamenting  voices, 

Image  of  image,  ghost  of  ghostly  elf. 
That  such  a  thing  as  thou  feel'st  warm  or  cold  ? 
Yet  what  and  whence  thy  gain,  if  thou  withhold 

These  costless  shadows  of  thy  shadowy  self ! 
Be  sad!  be  glad!  be  neither!  seek,  or  shun! 
Thou  hast  no  reason  why  1    Thou  can'st  have  none ; 
Thy  being's  being  is  a  contradiction." 


THE    POSITIVE    PniLOSOPUY.  501 

Thus  we  can  not  entertain  any  apprehensions  of  the  ultimate 
success  of  atheistic  science.     But  we  speak  with  a  confidence 
no  less  assured,  when  we  say,  that  its  present  diffusion  may  be 
wide,  that  it  is  either  expressly  the  most  formidable  infidel 
agency  of  the  day,  or  one  of  the  most  formidable.    It  possesses 
elements  of  strength  which  have  ever  proved  powerful.     Be- 
sides all  that  we  formerly  specified,  we  may  still  note,  as  per- 
taining to  this  philosophy,  two  characteristics  which  render  it 
strong :  dcfiniteness  and  union.     And  it  is  favored  by  circum- 
stances.    The  general  human  mind  has  scarce  power  to  act 
long  and  earnestly  on  indirect  motives ;  let  it  be  once  under- 
stood that  metaphysics,  however  useful  as  a  mental  gymnastic, 
can  yield  directly  no  harvest  of  truth,  and,  we  suspect,  meta- 
physics will  not  long  continue  to  be  pursued.     It  is  this  con- 
sideration which  leads  us  to  withhold  at  least  an  absolute  assent 
from  what  Sir  William  Hamilton  says  on  this  subject ;  and  if 
metaphysical  skepticism  can  find  no  arrow  in  the  quiver  of  the 
great  advocate  of  metaphysical  studies,  there  has,  beyond  ques- 
tion, been  much  in  the  late  history  of  metaphysics  to  produce 
and  encourage  it.    It  is  now  a  widely-known  and  acknowledged 
fact,  that  the  last  great  efflorescence  of  metaphysical  study  in 
Germany  withered  away  without  having  borne  any  fruit,  that 
when  men  attempted  to  take  of  it  and  apply  it  to  use,  it  crumbled 
away  in  their  hands :  Hegel,  the  last  great  ontologist,  died  with 
the  assertion  on  his  lips  that  no  one  understood  him.    All  that 
expenditure  of  intellect  seems  to  the  practical  man  to  have  gone 
for  nothing,  to  have  been  so  much  mere  absolute  loss.     The 
disciple  of  Comte  is  at  hand,  urgent  in  pressing  on  him  that 
this  is  but  the  last  instance  of  a  failure  in  which  the  life  of  the 
best  intellect  of  earth  has  been  wasted,  the  last  earnest  attempt, 
■with  terrestrial  arrow,  to  strike  the  stars.     He  w^ill  lay  forth 
nis  laws,  he  will  show  how  they  account  for  phenomena,  he  will 


502  THE     POSITIVE     PHILOSOPHY. 

prate  plausibly  of  a  good  that  is  definite,  an  end  that  is  seen. 
Here,  at  least,  he  will  say,  is  rest ;  after  six  thousand  years  of 
tossing  and  groping,  the  race  requires  it ;  cast  away  Utopian 
fancies,  they  but  clog  the  soul  in  its  way  to  real  advantage ; 
take  the  good  you  have,  and  fly  not  weakly  after  other  that  you 
know  not  of.  And  then  there  is  Mammon  to  lend  his  auxiliary 
prompting,  and  the  hard  practicality,  the  quite  unideal  nature, 
of  every  day  life,  to  sanction  and  second.  Let  us  remember 
well  the  reign  of  sensualism  in  France ;  and  let  us  not  forget 
that  not  a  little  of  the  ardent  and  really  noble  mind  of  Eng- 
land follows,  with  more  or  less  completeness  of  adherence,  the 
banner  of  Comte.  Amid  decaying  systems  of  metaphysics, 
and  systems  of  religion  whose  difference  is  too  readily  taken  as 
a  proof  of  universal  unsoundness,  the  compact,  single-eyed  band 
of  positive  atheists  may  go  very  far ! 


CHAPTER  II. 

PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM. 

We  enter  not  again  upon  any  examination  of  Pantheism. 
Our  object  in  this  chapter  is  to  inquire  very  briefly  what  hope 
may  be  reposed  in  the  infidel  spiritualism  of  the  day,  in  the 
contest  which  all  who  believe  in  a  spirit  at  all  may  unite  in 
waging  with  the  Positive  Philosophy. 

The  literary  atmosphere  resounds  at  present  with  cries  that 
remind  us  of  what  is  lofty  and  eternal  in  the  destiny  of  man. 
We  hear  of  the  eternities  and  the  immensities,  of  the  divine 
silences,  of  the  destinies,  of  load-stars,  still,  though  seen  by 
few,  in  the  heavens.  We  are  well-nigh  confounded,  and,  un- 
less we  have  listened  long,  are  at  a  loss  to  attach  a  meaning 
to  the  high-sounding  but  indefinite  terms.  Meanwhile  the 
compact  phalanx  under  the  black  flag  is  steadily  advancing. 
Can  the  spiritualistic  pantheism  which  emanated  or  still  ema- 
nates from  Mr.  Carlyle,  oppose  to  it  a  line  which  will  not 
easily  be  broken  1 

We  must  answer  with  an  emphatic  negative.  We  shall 
state  briefly  the  leading  reasons  which  prevail  with  us  in  so 
doing. 

We  assert  of  infidel  spiritualism  that  it  is  rendered  practically 
powerless  by  one  great  characteristic;  the  reverse  of  that 
which  imparts  strength  to  the  positive  array :  it  is  hopelessly 
indefinite. 


604  PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM. 

The  British  intellect  imperatively  demands  clearness.  We 
think  we  may  venture  now  to  hazard  what  is  partly  an  assump- 
tion and  partly  a  prediction,  that  the  era  of  indefiniteness  in 
metaphysics  and  religion  is  drawing  to  a  close,  and  will  ere 
long  have  been.  A  strange  delusion  seems  to  have  possessed 
these  latter  years,  that  metaphysical  truth,  that  discourse  about 
the  origin,  nature,  and  destiny  of  man,  was  necessarily  dim, 
obscure,  unintelligible  to  ordinary  minds.  Presumptuous  as 
it  may  seem  in  us,  we  must  conceive  it  possible  that,  eighty 
or  a  hundred  years  hence,  the  spectacle  of  Coleridge  and  his 
gaping  circle  at  Highgate  will  be  regarded  with  an  interest 
quite  dissimilar  from  that  which  has  hitherto  attached  to  it. 
We  fancy  its  interest  will  partake  somewhat  of  ironical  won- 
der. It  will  be  taken  as  a  sign  of  the  singular  decay  and 
absence  of  metaphysical  study  in  England.  All  that  incom- 
prehensibility in  which  the  words  of  the  great  magician  were 
wrapped,  will  be  referred,  partly  to  the  want  of  intellectual 
power  in  the  magician,  and  in  still  larger  measure  to  absence 
of  philosophical  knowledge  and  metaphysical  penetration  in 
the  audience.  Men  will  have  decided  that  the  whole  philoso- 
phy of  Coleridge,  had  it  arisen  in  Germany  instead  of  England, 
would  have  been  recognized,  not  as  a  wonderful  phenomenon, 
worthy  to  be  stared  at  and  bowed  down  to  by  all  men,  but  as 
a  wing,  with  fittings  of  its  own,  of  the  general  edifice  of  the 
philosophy  of  Schelling.  In  Germany,  we  imagine,  it  would 
have  produced  a  few  magazine  articles,  and  perhaps  a  certain 
amount  of  disputation  in  the  class-room  of  Schelling  :  in  Eng- 
land it  was  enough  to  found  an  oracle.  We  are  not  sure  that 
it  will  even  seem  presumptuous  now  to  hazard  this  prediction. 
Clearness  has  again  been  vindicated  for  the  language  of  meta- 
physics, a  clearness  equal  to  that  of  Hume  or  that  of  Berkeley  : 
and  the  whole  magnificent  fabric  of  painted  mist  and  moon- 


PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM.  505 

shine,  which  named  itself  the  philosophy  of  Schelling,  has  been 
smitten  as  by  keen  lightnings,  and  may  be  said  to  have  van- 
ished from  the  intellectual  horizon.  This  twofold  result  has 
been  attained  by  one  philosopher  :  Sir  William  Hamilton 
writes  with  the  clearness  and  smites  with  the  force  of  light- 
ning. His  advent  on  the  philosophic  stage  we  take  to  have 
marked  the  date  at  which  the  conclusion  of  the  indefinite  era 
became  certain. 

Now  what  definiteness  do  we  find  in  the  floating  spiritual- 
ism of  the  day  1  We  find,  in  looking  toward  Mr.  Carlyle, 
that,  though  the  Coleridgean  distinction  between  reason  and 
understanding  may  be  shelved  and  laughed  at,  there  is  yet 
some  esoteric  region,  removed  altogether  from  that  of  logic, 
where  truth  is  still  secluded.  We  could  have  thanked  Mr. 
Carlyle  for  his  chapter  on  Coleridge,  the  cleverness  of  which 
is  absolutely  amazing,  if  he  had  clearly  promulgated  the  doc- 
trine, that  there  is  more  sense  and  straightforward  manliness 
in  going  at  once  to  the  question,  Is  this  true  1  than  in  raising 
endless  debate  as  to  how  the  truth  is  got  at,  and  whether  it  is 
handed  to  us  by  reason  or  by  understanding ;  if  he  had  really 
exposed,  as  one  of  our  latest  hallucinations,  the  conception  that 
truth  was  to  be  reached,  not  by  the  persistent  and  earnest  use 
of  the  old  time-tried  faculties,  but  by  cunningly  evolving  some 
new  faculty,  which,  by  its  power  to  see,  or  its  method  of  man- 
ipulating truth,  would  at  length  bring  us  into  the  light  of 
knowledge.  But  we  positively  discover  that  Mr.  Carlyle  him- 
self has  some  mysterious  grove,  into  which,  when  hit  by  the 
sun-shafts  of  argument,  he  can  retire ;  that  plain  logic  and 
everyday  reasoning  will  not  suffice  to  combat  any  doctrine  of 
his ;  that  the  only  difference  between  him  and  Coleridge  is, 
that  the  latter  did  name  the  new  and  superior  faculty  reason, 
nay,  in  his  discourses  on  its  nature  and  function,  embodied  a 

22 


506  PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM. 

large  amount  of  truth,  while  Mr.  Carlyle  gives  no  name  what 
ever  to  his  Dodona  grove,  and  demands  belief  without  eves 
a  verbal  reason  for  its  accordance.  Looking,  too,  from  the 
means  by  which  truth  is  attained,  to  the  truth  arrived  at,  is 
not  the  indefiniteness  still  extreme  ?  We  say  not  that,  save 
in  one  or  two  perplexing  instances,  the  great  author  of  whom 
we  now  speak  ever  writes  without  having  a  deep  meaning  in 
his  words ;  but  we  now  speak  of  the  applicability  of  his  teach- 
ing, and  of  that  of  his  whole  school,  to  the  positive  education 
of'the  race,  to  the  practical  opposition  of  atheism.  And  what 
a  ghastly  prospect  oj)ens  before  us !  We  put  the  question, 
What  is  the  outlook  for  eternity  1  Amid  much  denunciation 
of  doubt,  we  learn  that  we  can  not  be  assuredly  answered,  that 
a  look  into  futurity  is  a  look  into  a  "  great  darkness."  We 
ask.  What  is  virtue,  and  how  we  are  to  perform  the  duties  of 
our  station  ?  We  are  told  that  hero-worship  is  the  all-em- 
bracing formula  of  duty,  and  that  in  its  performance  we  attdn 
unto  the  three  reverences.  When,  at  last,  we  are  driven  by 
the  inappeasable  demand  of  our  souls  to  say,  Who  is  the  Lord, 
that  we  may  serve  Him  1  -we  are  told  that  even  once-honored 
Pantheism  is  but  matter  for  a  jest,  and  that  all  we  can  know 
of  God  is  that  He  is  inscrutable.  A  new  proclamation  of  the 
w^orship  of  the  Unknown  God  will  hardly  serve  for  the  practi- 
cal teaching  of  the  world. 

On  this  last  sublime  and  solemn  theme,  we  must  be  permit- 
ted to  offer  a  remark.  There  may  exist  a  spurious  humility, 
and  mock  reverence,  wdiich  will  not  honor  God,  and  will  de- 
fraud man  of  his  highest  glory.  It  does  not  honor  God  to 
make  Him  one  with  the  Fate  of  Paganism,  and  virtually  al- 
lege that  His  creatures  can  not  or  dare  not  draw  near  to  Him : 
and  if  I  can  not  in  some  way  know  my  God,  where  is  the  dis- 
tinction of  my  birthright  from  that  of  the  beasts  that  perish  ? 


PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM.  50*7 

Contemplating  the  universe  in  its  vastness,  all  alit  as  it  is  with 
radiance,  remembering  that  proximity  is  but  relative,  and  that 
the  particles  of  a  sand-grain  may  to  God  appear  no  more  in 
contact  than  the  clustering  galaxies  whose  distance  we  can  not 
sum,  it  is  in  the  power  of  the  human  mind,  by  an  effort  of  ab- 
straction, to  figure  it  all  as  a  bush,  burning  in  the  desert  of 
immensity,  to  which  the  reasoning  spirit,  in  hallowed  awe,  yet 
with  a  certain  sublime  confidence,  may  draw  near  to  see  its 
God.  Let  the  shoes  be  from  the  feet,  let  no  rash  or  irrever- 
ent approach  be  made,  but  let  no  human  being  shut  his  ear  to 
the  voice  that  calls  to  him  as  to  the  Hebrew  prophet.  I  will 
not  reject  the  highest  attribute  of  my  humanity,  power  to  hear 
that  voice ;  I  will  not  go  away,  saying,  the  sight  is  too  great 
for  me,  and  indeed  inscrutable.  I  will  look  because  I  am  king 
of  the  earth,  and  I  have  my  commission  from  Him  who  calls : 
I  will  look  with  silent  reverence,  because  He  is  King  of  the 
universe. 

We  proceed  to  a  second  argument. 

We  need  not  claim  the  assent  of  the  followers  of  Mr. 
Carlyle  to  the  fact  that  religion  must  live  in  a  man  or  nation, 
if  he  or  it  is  to  be  strong :  this  truth  has  been  fully  acknowl- 
edged by  the  school.  But  we  earnestly  entreat  both  the  strict 
adherents  of  Mr.  Carlyle,  and  all  those  who  look  for  individual 
and  social  regeneration  in  an  abandonment  of  the  forms  of 
Christianity,  and  the  pervasion  of  the  atmosphere  of  the  world 
by  a  certain  lofty  spiritual  illumination,  to  consider  one  great 
historical  fact,  and  one  great  human  characteristic.  The  his- 
torical fact  is,  that  a  religion  devoid  of  forms  has  never  been 
the  religion  of  a  nation  ;  the  human  characteristic  is,  that  man 
will  never  bow  down  before  a  truth  discovered,  but  only  be- 
fore one  received  on  authority,  that  he  will  worship  by  faith 
and  not  by  reason,  a  God  not  discovered  but  revealed. 


508  PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM. 

We  quote  a  passage  from  Jonathan  Edwards  : — "  I  sup- 
pose it  will  he  acknowledged  by  the  deist,  that  the  Christian 
religion  is  the  most  rational  and  pure  that  ever  was  established 
in  any  society  of  men ;  and  that  they  w^ill  except  only  them- 
selves,  as  serving  God  in  a  manner  more  according  to  his  will, 
than  the  Christian  manner.  But,  can  any  believe  that  God 
has  so  wholly  thrown  away  mankind,  that  there  never  yet  has 
been  a  society  of  men  that  have  rightly  paid  respect  to  their 
Creator  1 

"  It  is  easily  proved  that  the  highest  end  and  happiness  of 
man  is  to  view  God's  excellences,  to  love  Him,  and  receive  ex- 
pressions of  His  love.  This  love,  including  all  those  other 
affections  which  depend  upon,  and  are  necessarily  connected 
with  it,  we  express  in  worship.  The  highest  end  of  society 
among  men,  therefore,  must  be,  to  assist  and  join  with  each 
other  in  this  employment.  But  how  comes  it  to  pass,  that 
this  end  of  society  was  never  yet  obtained  among  deists  % 
Where  was  ever  any  social  worship  statedly  performed  by 
them?  And  were  they  disposed  socially  to  express  their 
love  and  honor,  which  way  would  they  go  about  it '?  They 
have  nothing  from  God  to  direct  them.  Doubtless  there 
would  be  perpetual  dissensions  about  it,  unless  they  were 
disposed  to  fall  in  with  the  Christian  model.  We  may  be 
convinced,  therefore,  that  revelation  is  necessary  to  right 
social  worship y 

Is  this  not  a  profound  and  suggestive  passage  ?  And  may 
we  not  say  that  we  have  arrived  at  a  time  whose  very  charac- 
teristic it  is,  as  distinguished  from  other  times,  that  the  truth 
it  embodies  be  applied.  Man  is  such  a  child  of  the  Infinite, 
so  indissolubly,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  willingly  or  un- 
willingly, is  he  bound  to  an  Infinite  Creator,  that  he  can  act 
earnestly  and  long,  he  can  bridle  passion  and  cast  away  sloth, 


PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM.  509 

he  can  live  well  and  die  calmly,  only  Avhen  strengthened, 
urged,  supported,  by  motives  which  seem  to  him  infinite. 
The  tradition  that  comes  out  of  a  dim  antiquity  will  win  his 
homage,  the  song  of  his  country's  bard  will  inspire  him ;  but 
the  law,  however  sapient,  which  was  promulgated  yesterday, 
acts  faintly  on  his  enthusiasm,  and  the  constitution  which 
exists  merely  on  paper,  which  is  written  in  no  time-hallowed 
memories  on  the  heart  of  the  people,  though  devised  by  one 
who  has  exhausted  the  science  of  polity,  and  inaugurated  with 
the  waving  of  all  a  nation's  banners,  and  the  flourishing  of  all 
a  nation's  trumpets,  will  either  be  trodden  into  the  kennels  or 
washed  out  in  blood.  And  if  man  demands  elements  of  in- 
finitude in  the  modes  and  maxims  of  his  everyday  life,  if  his 
faculties  will  never  heartily  serve  where  they  can  altogether 
grasp,  and  his  emotions  lie  very  placid,  if  he  knows  precisely 
whence  the  wind  bloweth  that  is  to  move  them,  can  we  find 
any  difliculty  in  connecting  with  the  general  nature  and  char- 
acter of  man  the  phenomenon  which  the  observant  and  reflect- 
ive Edwards  remarked  ?  If  man  sees  a  brother,  by  the  might 
of  his  own  reason,  unvalling  the  face  of  God,  he  will  connect 
with  that  God  the  element  of  finitude  which  attached  to  His 
revealer,  and  in  neither  the  fear  nor  the  love  with  which  he  re- 
gards Him,  will  there  be  that  infinite  something  which  is  of 
the  nature  of  worship.  And  since,  by  a  corresponding  neces- 
sity, man  ever  demands  forms,  since  it  is  an  impossibility  for 
him  to  worship  mere  vague  abstractions — a  fact  which,  we 
presume,  no  serious  thinker  in  the  ranks  of  the  spiritualists  will 
deny — we  are  shut  up  irresistibly  to  one  of  two  alternatives, 
either  to  abandon  religion  altogether,  or  to  find  one  which  in 
origin  and  fi^rm  is  divine.  Let  it  be  remarked,  that  the  form 
of  religion  is  not  the  same  with  forms  of  worship  ;  the  latter 
may  var;y  indefinitely  or  may  not,  and  yet  the  religion  retain 


610  PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM. 

its  hold  on  the  heart  of  a  nation ;  but  the  former  can  not  de- 
part, and  religion  remain.  We  wish  specially  to  urge  this 
argument.  It  is  a  great  leading  doctrine  of  Mr.  Carlyle's,  that 
all  forms  die,  that  spirit  only  lives ;  and  far  and  wide  be- 
yond the  ranks  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  followers,  you  may  meet  with 
vague  ideas  about  the  form  of  Christianity  being  antiquated, 
but  the  spirit  being  yet  destined  to  survive.  We  bid  all  wh< 
entertain  such  ideas  to  look  well,  lest  they  be  harboring  ar 
absurdity,  hoping  for  an  impossibility.  Various  religious 
ideas  have  taken  form  in  various  religions ;  but  there  is  one 
phenomenon  which  we  challenge  any  one  to  present  to  us 
from  history,  the  worship  of  a  personified  religious  idea,  when 
the  form  of  personification  was  known  to  be  an  allegory.  If 
the  great  forms  of  the  Christian  religion,  the  Unity  and  the 
Trinity,  the  atonement  by  the  Son,  and  the  operation  of  the 
Spirit,  are  considered  to  body  forth  certain  moral  ideas  and 
truths,  the  race  may  conceivably  have  worshiped  the  ideas  un~ 
der  these  forms,  but,  if  once  it  is  understood  that  every  such 
embodiment  is  merely  temporary  and  allegorical,  men  will  do 
with  the  ideas  as  they  choose,  but  never  again  can  they  receive 
them  as  a  religion.  Philosophy  and  religion  can  not  become 
one :  the  abstract  idea  which  you  receive  as  a  philosophic 
truth,  you  can  not  worship,  the  God  before  Whom  you  kneel, 
by  whatever  name  you  call  Him,  can  never  be  to  you  an  ab- 
straction :  the  idea  of  philosophy  is  truth^  the  idea  of  religion 
■s  life.  We  beg  leave  to  submit  this  argument,  as  a  reduction 
^f  the  Carlylian  spiritualism  to  a  practical  zero.  On  all  who 
Dwn  the  tremendous  power  of  the  religious  instinct,  we  urge 
the  necessity  of  accepting  as  immovable  and  eternal,  the  theo- 
logical facts  of  Christianity  ;  or  proclaiming  a  new  religion  in 
the  only  way  in  which  a  religion  as  such  can  be  proclaimed, 
on  the  authority  of  God,  attested  by  the  exertion  of  infinite 


PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM.  511 

and  creative  energy,  by  suspending  or  modifying  the  existing 
laws  of  nature,  in  one  word,  by  Avorking  miracles ;  or,  thirdly, 
receding  from  their  position. 

There  is,  in  the  present  age,  and  in  a  country  of  freedom,  an 
awful  import  in  the  appeal  we  here  make  in  favor  of  positive 
religion.  There  are  terrible  powers  slumbering  in  the  human 
breast.  It  is  not  such  an  easy  matter  to  frame  a  religion  that 
will  make  men  tremble  or  work !  We  have  often  thought, 
with  a  deep  and  curious  interest,  on  what  we  have  all  heard  of 
as  ]Mr.  Leigh  Hunt's  Religion  of  the  Heart.  AVe  know  this 
work  only  from  reliable  indirect  sources,  but  the  name  itself 
is  sufficient  to  hint  to  us  its  nature,  and  enable  us  to  compute 
its  reasonableness  and  likelihood  of  success.  The  religion  of 
the  heart !  The  cure  of  human  ills,  the  satisfaction  of  human 
doubt,  the  vanquishing  of  human  sin,  by  an  appeal  to  the  finer 
feelings,  and  by  the  gentle  influence  of  a  meek  sentimentality  ! 
Has  Mr.  Hunt  set  forth  his  theory  to  Mr.  Carlyle,  and  en- 
deavored to  make  him  a  proselyte  1  We  trust  he  has.  The 
interview  would  have  been  worth  the  theatrical  exhibitions 
of  a  season.  How  did  the  sardonic  painter  of  the  French 
Revolution  look  upon  the  proposed  Palingenesia  1  Was  it 
with  inextinguishable  laughter,  or  with  a  glance  of  burning  fire, 
or  with  melancholy,  unutterable  scorn  1  He  knows  the  world 
is  not  a  cloud-film.  He  knows  that  men  are  not  wax  figures 
whose  cheeks  can  be  painted  by  a  delicate  lady-like  hand.  He 
might  tell  us  that  the  lion  of  the  desert,  with  the  madness  of 
hunger  in  his  eye,  may  be  tamed  by  sweetened  milk  and  water 
that  the  raging  volcano,  which  has  torn  up  the  welded  earth, 
and  is  hurling  its  flaming  fragments  at  the  sky,  may  be  lulled 
by  the  song  of  the  soft  west  wind  or  the  waving  of  a  lady's 
fan ;  that  the  chafed  surges  of  ocean  may  pause  and  bow  plac- 
idly their  heads,  when  the  maiden  prays  them  in  mild  accents 


512  PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM. 

to  spare  her  lover ;  but  that  man  is  to  he  charmed  by  no 
gentle  music,  that  man  is  a  creature  of  battle  and  of  blood, 
that  tlie  Furies  and  the  tempests  but  faintly  image  the  savage- 
ness  of  his  mood,  and  that  all  absurdities  pall  before  that 
which  regards  him  as  reclaimed  by  honied  words.  There 
is  but  one  thing  in  this  universe  that  will  overmaster  the 
spirit  of  man :  the  sight  of  God  laying  hold  of  His  thunder- 
bolts! 

The  Positive  Philosophy,  the  serried  ranks,  that  consciously 
or  unconsciously  follow  the  dark  guidance  of  Mammon  and 
Atheism,  are,  we  repeat,  advancing.  Say  not  Atheism  can 
not,  for  a  time,  prevail.  Even  now  the  Piend  may  be  filling  his 
chalice  in  the  fire  of  hell,  to  pour  it  on  our  heads  in  some  agony 
of  national  horror,  like  that  of  the  French  Kevolution.  Atheism 
has  ere  now  led  nations  captive,  and  a  theory  of  atheism  so 
plausible,  so  temperate,  so  seemingly  innocent  and  benign,  was 
never  advocated  in  the  world  before.  Are  we  to  oppose  it  by 
the  like  of  Mr.  Hunt's  Eeligion  of  the  Heart  1  Or  even  by 
sublime  but  sadly  indefuiite  apostrophes  to  duty,  and  rever- 
ence, and  hero-worship,  and  the  divine  silences  *?  If  we  might 
respectfully  draw  an  inference  from  the  tone  of  Mr.  Carlyle's 
late  works,  we  would  be  inclined  to  think  that  he  is  aware  of 
some  deficiency  of  force,  and  has  a  sad  foreboding  as  to  how  the 
battle  is  to  go ! 

A  glance  at  past  history  and  at  the  present  state  of  the 
world  reveals  to  us  here  two  perils  which  we  dare  not  over- 
ook.     The  one  is  superstition,  the  other,  licentiousness. 

It  will  not  be  in  the  power  of  atheism  to  extinguish  the  relig- 
ious instinct :  but  it  may  confine  its  manifestation  to  barbarous 
and  debasing  forms.  If  we  drive  away  from  us  religion,  when 
arrayed  in  the  spotless  robe  of  Christianity,  if  we  will  insist 
that  we  can  devise  for  ourselves,  with  the  aid  of  reason  and 


PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM.  613 

science,  better  rules  of  action  and  modes  of  life  than  arc  oficrcd 
by  that  Gospel,  which  even  its  enemies  allow  to  stand  j^re-em- 
inent  among  the  mstitutions  of  men,  we  will  fmd  religion,  by 
unalterable  necessity,  reappearing  among  us,  but  now  in  a 
polluted  garment,  and  bearing  a  curse  rather  than  a  blessing. 
Is  there  no  lesson  for  the  age  m  our  St.  Simonisras  and  Mor- 
monisms?  Do  they  not  prove  the  desperate  and  reckless 
yearning  of  the  human  heart  after  faith  in  God  ?  a  yearning 
not  to  be  appeased  by  the  removal  of  all  religious  education, 
not  to  be  satisfied  by  sensual  joys,  and  which,  if  there  is  no 
true  religion  in  which  it  can  rest,  will  always  call  forth  for  it- 
self some  humiliating  and  baneful  form  of  superstition. 

The  second  peril,  that  of  licentiousness,  is  no  distant  possi- 
bility, no  slight  and  permissible  evil :  we  suspect  the  time  is 
drawing  on  when  it  will  assail  the  very  life  of  our  nation. 
Against  this,  the  Positive  Philosophy  would  be  utterly  ineffi- 
cient. To  restrain,  indeed,  any  of  the  living  and  powerful 
forces  in  the  human  breast,  it  would  be  unavailing :  Super- 
stition would  break  asunder  its  green  withes,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  Passion,  on  the  other,  would  snap  its  flaxen  cords  as  with 
the  might  of  fire.  And  it  is  to  us  not  a  little  mysterious  how 
a  spiritualism,  so  high-toned  and  lofty  as  to  be  removed  above 
the  common  apprehension  of  men,  and  alleging  all  thought  of 
reward  or  punishment  immeasurably  beneath  the  serene  dig- 
nity of  its  virtue,  can  yet  look  with  indulgence,  or  at  least 
with  tolerance,  upon  foul  incontinence  !  We  think  that  if  there 
is  one  form  of  iniquity  beyond  another  which  all  pure-minded 
and  patriotic  men  ought  now  to  unite  in  opposing,  it  is  this. 
It  might  be  a  question  whether  there  is  a  sin  possible  to  a  writer, 
which  no  conceivable  amount  of  genius  is  sufficient  to  induce  us 
to  pardon.  If  such  there  be,  it  is  that  committed  in  the  works 
of  Byron.  We  can  bear  with  him  in  all  his  petulance  and 
22* 


514  PANTHEISTIC     SPIRITUALISM. 

scorn,  in  his  unhealthy  egotism  and  half-conscious  affectation ; 
one  star-glance  of  his  Muse  will  cast  a  redeeming  light  over 
all  that :  but,  if  we  see  him  draggling  in  the  very  mire  the 
pinions  of  that  very  Muse,  and  heaping  foul  ashes  on  her  head, 
how  can  we  pardon  him  1  "We  may  have  a  certain  sympathy 
with  him,  as  we  mark  his  regal  port,  though  his  aspect  and 
fierce  demeanor  seem  to  speak  defiance  to  God  and  man ; 
but  we  can  not  pardon  him  when  we  see  him,  a  vile  toad, 
squat  at  the  ear  of  youth  and  purity,  instilling  foul  poison. 
We  may  own  a  grandeur  in  Cain,  and  have  a  word  to  say 
even  for  the  Vision  of  Judgment,  but  Don  Juan  must  be  flung 
upon  the  dunghill.  We  never  can  think  of  the  state  of  the 
Roman  Empire  in  its  decline,  without  seeming  to  trace  certain 
analogies  between  its  state  and  that  of  Europe  in  the  present 
day  :  one  at  least  of  the  great  causes  which  then  enervated 
the  race,  and  fitted  it  to  be  trodden  in  the  dust  by  the  strong 
men  of  the  North,  is  now  in  operation  over  Europe.  And  if 
Atheism  and  Mammon  once  do  their  work,  the  judgments  of 
God  may  again  awaken  to  burn  up  a  polluted  and  enfeebled 
people !  When  the  carcass  of  a  nation  lies  dead,  tainting  the 
solar  system,  there  will  not  want  lightnings  to  kindle  its 
funeral  pyre ! 

Such  are  the  dangers  which  threaten  us,  and  such  the  power 
to  oppose  them.     Have  we  yet  another  hope  ?     , 


CHAPTER   III. 


GENERAL     CONCLUSION, 


We  have  but  a  few  words  to  add.  We  shall  consider  it 
made  good  in  the  foregohig  pages,  that  Christianity  still  retains 
power  to  breathe  a  healing  balm  into  social  and  individual  life ; 
and  we  shall  now  endeavor  briefly  to  indicate  in  what  precise 
position  it  stands,  and  how  it  is  capable,  as  in  every  age,  of 
drawing  around  it  all  the  real  enlightenment  of  the  time,  and 
going  on  ever  to  nobler  manifestation  and  wider  conquest. 

We  have  already  had  occasion  to  refer  to  the  remark  of 
Goethe,  that  "  thought  widens  but  lames ;"  that  it  is  a  natural 
law  and  tendency  that  the  intensity  of  belief  be  in  an  inverse 
ratio  to  its  range.  If  we  examine  well  the  religious  phenomena 
of  the  middle  ages,  we  will  find  them  characterized  indeed  by 
strength :  but  it  was  a  strength  that  owed  much  to  narrowness 
on  the  one  hand,  and  superstition  on  the  other.  History  has 
now,  so  to  speak,  lifted  the  roof  from  each  nation  and  from 
each  generation,  showing  the  many  families  that  dwell  under 
the  common  blue,  the  many  generations  within  one  cycle  of 
time ;  astronomy  has  opened  up  the  heavens  around  the  arro- 
gating earth,  and  compelled  it  to  dwindle  from  the  central  sun 
of  the  universe,  with  all  the  orbs  circling  round  it,  to  a  puny 
and  planetary  ball :  the  Reformation  shattered  the  vast  and  icy 
crystallization  of  Popery,  and  since  then  the  tongue  of  contro- 
versy has  never  been  silent ;  men  must  now  have  a  far  wider 


516  GENERAL     CONCLtJSION. 

range  of  ideas  than  in  former  ages.  A  proportionate  lessening 
of  intensity  is  the  necessary  result.  Is  it,  however,  to  be  im- 
possible that  the  faith  of  a  narrow  intensity  may  be  exchanged 
for  that  of  an  intelligent  knowledge,  which  difference  can  no 
longer  startle,  and  novelty  no  longer  imperil  ?  that  it  attain  a 
noble  and  manly  composm^e,  and  a  calmness  of  spiritual 
strength,  which  can  distinguish  between  opinions  and  opinions 
so  as  not  to  condemn  good  with  bad,  and  between  opinions  am 
men,  so  as  to  tolerate  and  love  the  one,  while  opposing  and 
exterminating  the  other  ?  To  mourn  over  the  old  intensity  is 
weak  ;  to  recoil  into  skepticism  and  the  universal  unsoldering 
of  belief,  is  a  cowardly  and  feeble  proceeding  :  to  be  religious 
without  superstition,  to  be  enlightened  yet  not  infidel,  is  at 
present  the  part  of  a  true  man.  It  may  at  length  be  possible 
for  Faith  and  Philosophy  to  form  an  alliance  on  such  terms  as 
these. 

Indecision  and  a  spurious  toleration  are  reigning  temptations 
of  the  day.  "  As  fiir,"  says  Coleridge,  "  as  opinions  and  not 
motives,  principles  and  not  men,  are  concerned,  I  neither  am 
tolerant,  nor  wish  to  be  regarded  as  such."  "  That  which  doth 
not  withstand,  hath  itself  no  standing-place."  And  again, 
quoting  from  Leighton : — "  Toleration  is  an  herb  of  spontaneous 
growth  in  the  soil  of  indifference ;  but  the  weed  has  none  of 
the  virtues  of  the  medicinal  plant  reared  by  humility  in  the 
garden  of  zeal."  We  can  not  too  carefully  remember  that,  if 
controversy  is  the  sign  of  an  imperfect  development  or  distem- 
pered action  of  life,  indifference,  whether  in  philosophy  or  re- 
ligion, is  death.  If  we  might  venture  to  trace  the  history  of 
toleration  in  modern  European  progress,  we  should  say  that  it 
had  come  through  two  stages,  and  might  now  be  hoped  to  be 
entering  on  the  third.  First,  there  was  the  deep  and  universal 
sleep  of  Paganism ;  the  throne  of  toleration  stood  immovable 


GENERAL     CONCLUSION.  5l7 

under  the  canopy  of  the  ancient  night.  Then,  for  long  ages, 
there  continued  the  reign  of  intolerance;  and,  with  all  its 
gloom,  we  hail  this  new  phenomenon  as  the  indication  of  a 
mighty  advancement  made  by  the  human  mind,  as  a  truth  of 
the  implantation  in  the  heart  and  intellect  of  the  race  of  the 
conviction  that  belief  was  important  enough  to  be  measured 
against  the  physical  life:  in  this  one  consideration,  we  find 
power  to  turn  into  a  beacon  of  promise  every  fire  which  per 
secution  has  lighted  since  the  commencement  of  the  Christian 
era.  A  third  and  noblest  epoch  is  still  possible.  It  is  that 
during  which  truth  shall  have  absolutely  and  forever  relin- 
quished the  ministry  of  pain,  and  shall  yet  continue  to  be  loved 
and  followed  with  devotion  equal  to  that  of  the  olden  time, 
when  Earnestness  and  Intolerance,  like  two  austere  Spartan 
kings,  exercised  joint  sovereignty.  It  is  one  great  hope  of  our 
age  that  this  era  can  now  be  inaugurated  :  and  one  great  peril 
that,  shaking  itself  free  of  the  middle-age  intolerance,  it  lapse 
into  that  indifference  to  all  spiritual  things  which  Christianity 
at  first  dispelled.  It  is  at  present  the  peculiar  and  urgent  duty 
of  every  brave  man  to  witness  to  the  unity,  the  definite  clear- 
ness, the  indestructible  life,  the  perpetual  value  of  truth :  to 
manifest  his  unwavering  conviction  that,  though  a  thousand 
arrows  fly  wide,  the  mark  is  stable  and  eternal ;  that,  though 
every  voice  of  a  discord,  like  that  in  the  cave  of  tEoIus,  proclaim 
that  truth  is  with  it,  truth  itself  is  immovable  and  immortal, 
and  would  be  nowise  differently  affected,  though  all  the  lan- 
guages of  men  were  blended  to  express  it  in  one  indivisible  tone. 
And  it  is  not  to  be  disguised  that  the  attitude  of  Christianity 
has  in  no  age  been  that  of  compromise.  It  has  been  like  a 
fiery  sword,  going  up  and  down  among  the  nations,  searching, 
separating,  and  startling.  It  has  never  striven  to  show  the 
similarity  of  error  to  truth,  or  to  attempt  a  patchwork  alliance 


518  GENERAL     CONCLUSION. 

"between  them.  Any  such  attempt  must  come  to  nought ;  and 
it  should  be  seriously  laid  to  heart  by  all  how  deadly  is  the  in- 
jury which  may  be  inflicted  by  erring  friendship,  or  a  rash  zeal 
that  can  not  wait.  There  have  been  many  arguments  adduced 
to  prove  that  Judas,  in  coming  to  the  Pharisees  to  bargain  for 
the  betrayal  of  his  Lord,  might  not  actually  intend  His  death ; 
that  it  is  a  possibility  his  motive  was  but  to  force  on  the  man- 
ifestation of  the  kingdom  of  Jesus :  and  whether  we  are  con- 
vinced by  such  arguments  or  no,  they  contain  profound  sug- 
gestion for  us  of  these  latter  ages.  Let  us  beware  how  we 
serve  the  Lord,  even  with  a  kiss ! 

It  is  not  difficult,  we  think,  to  point  to  the  precise  tower  of 
the  strength  of  Christianity,  to  that  position  whose  abandon- 
ment is  the  final  yielding  up  of  the  victory.  There  is  in  the 
present  day  a  vast  deal  of  confounding  babble  about  book  rev- 
elations, historical  evidence,  and  so  on.  We  must  look  for 
some  source  of  calming  and  ordering  light  to  impart  coherence 
and  definiteness  to  our  ideas  of  revelation,  inspiration,  and  all 
kindred  subjects.  We  find  such  a  source,  and  we  reach  the 
ultimate  fortress  of  Christian  evidence,  when  we  consider  what, 
strictly  speaking,  the  Christian  Revelation  is.  It  is  the  Revela- 
tion of  a  Person :  it  is  the  manifestation  of  Jesus  Christ.  All 
Revelation  before  His  advent  is  the  radiance  that  heralds  the 
dawn :  all  Revelation  after  His  advent  is  the  shedding  on  the 
world  of  the  risen  Light.  Let  us  once  stand  in  His  audience 
in  Judea,  once  believe  that  Lie  raises  the  dead,  that  He  is  from 
God,  and  all  becomes  clear.  Out  of  His  lips  I  hear  the  w^ords, 
"  The  Scriptures  can  not  be  broken :"  the  words  are  clearly 
distinguished;  there  is  no  variety  of  reading;  history  hears 
the  words.  What  must  I  say  on  this  %  What  He  means  by 
Scripture  is  an  open  question ;  but  that,  if  what  He  does  in- 
tend can  be  broken.  His  word  is  broken  with  it,  can  not  be 


GENERAL     CONCLUSION.  619 

open  to  dispute.  I  listen  further;  I  hear  ITlm  utter  these 
words  :  "  Till  heaven  and  earth  pass,  one  jot  or  one  tittle  shall 
in  nowise  pass  from  the  law,  till  all  be  fulfilled."  Here  again 
I  ask  history  what  lie  means  by  the  law,  but  I  must,  in  the 
meanwhile,  grant  that  a  stronger  declaration  of  the  supernatural 
character  of  a  certain  writing  so  named  could  not  be  framed. 
What  now  becomes  of  all  the  jargon  about  a  book  revelation  1 
Can  I  believe  Jesus  without  believing  His  words'?  And  I  find 
that  these  are  not  exceptional  words,  but  that  in  many  forms 
and  on  many  occasions  He  utters  similar.  I  can  not  fail  to 
perceive  in  Him  a  fixed  habit  of  regarding  a  certain  body  of 
writings,  as  authoritative  in  matters  of  doctrine,  and  super- 
natural in  respect  of  foresight.  I  note  also  that  there  accom- 
pany Him  twelve  men,  that  He  sends  them  out  to  preach, 
miraculously  endowed,  that  He  says  to  them  expressly,  "  He 
that  receiveth  you  receiveth  me."  I  hear  Him  promise  them 
the  "  Holy  Ghost,"  in  these  words :  "  But  the  Comforter,  which 
is  the  Holy  Ghost,  whom  the  Father  will  send  in  my  name. 
He  shall  teach  you  all  things,  and  briiici  all  things  to  you?'  re- 
membrance,  whatsoever  I  have  said  unto  you."  This,  I  must 
admit,  seems  an  explicit  promise  of  exemption  from  error  in 
things  connected  with  the  teaching  of  the  Gospel.  Last  of  all, 
I  watch  Him  in  the  midst  of  His  disciples  after  His  resurrec- 
tion, and  once  more  hear  these  words — "Ye  shall  receive 
power  after  that  the  Holy  Ghost  is  come  upon  you,  and  ye 
shall  be  witnesses  unto  me^  both  in  Jerusalem,  and  in  all 
Judea,  and  in  Samaria,  and  unto  the  uttermost  parts  crf  the 
earth."  As  I  see  Him  received  into  the  cloud,  and  vanishing 
toward  heaven,  can  I  doubt  any  longer  that  He  has  left  trust 
worthy  apostles  of  His  doctrines  ? — can  I  turn  away  from  the 
witnesses  whom  He  has  expressly  commissioned  %  If  I  can 
repose  absolute  confidence  in  the  declaration  and  promise  of 


520  GENERAL    CONCLUSION. 

the  Saviour,  my  future  inquiries  are  limited  to  the  discovery 
of  that  "  Scripture"  which  lie  said  could  not  be  broken,  and 
that  testimony  which  His  commissioned  "witnesses"  bore. 
Confirmatory  evidence  may  arise  from  many  quarters,  but  this 
is  the  center  toward  which  all  must  converge.  And  let  it  be 
recollected  that,  in  order  to  this  result,  we  demand  not  any  aid 
save  that  of  history,  of  unaided  human  faculty,  and  (by  hy- 
pothesis) uninspired  human  knowledge :  we  ascend  the  mount 
with  our  natural  limbs,  but  we  reach  a  station  where  we  can 
see  the  hand  of  God  tracing  characters  in  celestial  light. 

Christ  and  Christianity  thus  brings  us  to  the  Bible :  we 
crave  permission  to  quote  certain  sentences  from  Coleridge 
touching  that  Book : 

"  In  every  generation,  and  wherever  the  light  of  Revelation 
has  shone,  men  of  all  ranks,  conditions,  and  states  of  mind, 
have  found  in  this  volume  a  correspondent  for  every  move- 
ment toward  the  Better  felt  in  their  own  hearts.  The  needy 
soul  has  found  supply,  the  feeble  a  help,  the  sorrowful  a  com- 
fort ;  yea,  be  the  recipiency  the  least  that  can  consist  with 
moral  life,  there  is  an  answering  grace  ready  to  enter.  The 
Bible  has  been  found  a  spiritual  world — spiritual,  and  yet  at 
the  same  time  outward  and  common  to  all.  You  in  one  place, 
I  in  another — all  men  somewhere,  or  at  some  time,  meet  with 
an  assurance  that  the  hopes  and  fears,  the  thoughts  and  yearn- 
ings, that  proceed  from,  or  tend  to,  a  right  spirit  in  us,  are  not 
dreams  or  fleeting  singularities,  no  voices  heard  in  sleep,  or 
specters  which  the  eye  suffers,  but  not  perceives.  As  if  on 
some  dark  night  a  pilgrim,  suddenly  beholding  a  bright  star 
moving  before  him,  should  stop  in  fear  and  perplexity.  But 
lo  !  traveler  after  traveler  passes  by  him,  and  each,  being  ques- 
tioned whither  he  is  going,  makes  answer,  '  I  am  following  yon 
guiding  Star  !'   The  pilgrim  quickens  his  own  steps,  and  presses 


GENERAL     CONCLUSION.  621 

Dnward  in  confidence.  More  confident  still  will  he  be,  if  by  the 
wayside  he  should  find,  here  and  there,  ancient  monuments, 
each  ^Yilh  its  votive  lamp,  and  on  each  the  name  of  some  former 
pilgrim,  and  a  record  that  there  he  had  first  seen  or  begun  to 
follow  the  benignant  Star ! 

"  No  otherwise  is  it  with  the  varied  contents  of  the  sacred 
volume.  The  hungry  have  found  food,  the  thirsty  a  living 
spring,  the  feeble  a  staff,  and  the  victorious  wayfarer  songs  of 
welcome  and  strains  of  music ;  and  as  long  as  each  man  asks 
on  account  of  his  wants,  and  asks  what  he  wants,  no  man  will 
discover  aught  amiss  or  deficient  in  the  vast  and  many-cham- 
bered storehouse. 

"  For  more  than  a  thousand  years  the  Bible,  collectively 
taken,  has  gone  hand  in  hand  with  civilization,  science,  law — 
in  short,  with  the  moral  and  intellectual  cultivation  of  the  spe- 
cies— always  supporting,  and  often  leading  the  way.  Its  very 
presence,  as  a  believed  Book,  has  rendered  the  nations  emphat- 
ically a  chosen  race,  and  this,  too,  in  exact  proportion  as  it  is 
more  or  less  generally  known  and  studied.  Of  those  nations 
which  in  the  highest  degree  enjoy  its  influences,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  affirm,  that  the  differences,  public  and  private,  physi- 
cal, moral,  and  intellectual,  are  only  less  than  what  might  be 
expected  from  a  diversity  of  species.  Good  and  holy  men, 
and  the  best  and  wisest  of  mankind,  the  kingly  spirits  of  his- 
tory, enthroned  in  the  hearts  of  mighty  nations,  have  borne 
witness  to  its  influences,  have  declared  it  to  be  beyond  com- 
pare the  most  perfect  instrument,  the  only  adequate  organ  of 
Humanity." 

These  beautiful  sentences  will  not  fail  to  recall  to  many  the 
tones  and  touches  of  glowing  eulogy  of  the  Scriptures  scattered 
over  the  works  of  Mr.  Carlyle  ;  and  it  were  no  difficult  task  to 
give  actual  realizatiDn  to  the  assertion  in  the  concluding  clause, 


522  GENERAL     CONCLUSION. 

by  appending  an  extended  list  of  those  mighty  intellects  -which 
in  all  ages  have  recognized  an  individual  greatness  and  sub- 
limity in  the  strange  Book.  It  is  encompassed,  all  must  con- 
ceive, with  a  mystery  and  ancient  grandeur  which  set  it  alone 
among  the  phenomena  of  time,  and  will  cause  any  sober  and 
thoughtful  man  to  approach  it  with  a  feeling  akin  to  awe. 
Gradually  beaming  forth,  in  the  infancy  of  the  race,  ere  the 
dawn  of  history,  and  reaching  meridian  splendor  over  the 
manger  of  Bethlehem,  it  seems  to  possess  a  unity,  measured 
by  time,  bridging  the  two  eternities  between  which  it  lies,  and 
over  the  whole  stormy  history  of  mankind  casting  a  soft  rain- 
bow splendor,  a  mild,  heaven-lit  radiance  of  infinite  hope.  Men 
and  nations,  at  least  as  great  as  ever  figured  in  the  annals  of 
the  world,  have  not  merely  prized  it  but  held  that  its  light  is, 
by  nature,  alone ;  that  it  is  diverse  from  aught  that  can  be  at- 
tributed to  the  action  of  those  faculties  belonging  to  man  in 
his  present  state  as  a  species ;  that  it  could  no  more  have  been 
the  production  of  a  Shakespeare  or  a  Newton,  than  of  a  child  ; 
that  it  came  even  from  Him  who  hung  the  stars  and  ranged 
the  galaxies,  in  mercy  to  a  world  in  spiritual  night,  lying 
under  the  mysterious  eclipse  of  sin.  The  destinies  of  humanity 
are  bound  up  with  that  Book ! 

The  Word  of  God  suggests  His  works.  We  have  traced, 
in  some  measure,  the  general  action  and  injfluence  upon  men 
of  a  physical  science  in  league  with  atheism.  But  the  proxim- 
ity of  darkness  can  never  defile  light,  the  fact  that  knowledge 
has  been  made  the  minister  of  evil  can  never  absolve  us  from 
the  responsibility  of  making  it  the  handmaid  of  good.  Our 
God  made  the  world  :  every  discovery  of  its  treasures,  every 
revelation  of  its  beauty,  must  be  marked  by  Christians  with  a 
sacred  interest.  We  offer  one  or  two  words  on  the  present 
relations  of  Christianity  and  science. 


GENERAL     CONCLUSION.  523 

It  is  a  sublime  and  suggestive  thought  of  Thomas  de  Quin- 
cey's,  that  it  was  only  at  the  Reformation  that  Christendom 
began  rightly  to  decipher  and  understand  the  oracles  of  God. 
It  is  nowise  inconceivable  to  us,  that  modern  science  may  bear 
a  commission  to  shed  a  light  upon  these  oracles  which  will 
deserve  the  name  of  another  Reformation.  Even  as  it  is, 
science  has  done  much.  It  has  widened  vastly  the  conception 
of  all  enlightened  men  touching  the  power  and  the  working  of 
God.  The  astronomic  scheme  of  the  heavens,  which  satisfied 
the  mind  of  Milton,  and  which  he  has  lighted  up  with  a  radi- 
ance which  will  never  fade  in  the  temple  of  his  immortal  song, 
is  now  known  assuredly  to  bear  no  more  proportion  to  that 
limitless  immensity  where  dwells  the  Almighty,  and  where 
the  unnumbered  worlds  He  has  willed  into  being  float  like  a 
little  cloud  of  light,  than  the  orrery  of  a  school-boy  to  the  con- 
ception of  the  mighty  poet.  Almost  strangely,  too,  and  cer- 
tainly in  accordance  with  no  presage  or  expectation,  physical 
science  has,  in  our  own  day,  thrown  a  light  of  spirituality  over 
the  page  of  inspiration,  bringing  out  a  radiance  thereon  hith- 
erto unseen,  and  touching  with  golden  fire  certain  of  the  dog- 
mas of  an  iron  theology.  It  has  shown  that  death  existed  in 
the  world  ere  the  fiill,  thus  turning  perforce  the  attention  of 
men  to  the  nature  of  that  death  entailed  upon  man  by  sin,  sug- 
gesting the  question  of  the  diflTerence  between  the  death  which 
can  pass  upon  an  animal  and  that  which  can  affect  a  spirit,  and 
opening  up  vast  fields  of  lofty  and  noble  speculation  regarding 
the  complete  and  healthful  nature  of  man,  whether  original  oi 
to  be  restored.  Science  has  certainly  opened  the  minds  of 
men  to  perceive  a  deeper  significance  than  hitherto  recognized 
in  the  words  of  our  Saviour  M'hich  declare  that  what  He  said 
to  His  disciples  was  "  spirit  and  life."  And  if  it  has  enabled 
us  more  clearly  to  discern  what  was  the  past  sentence  and 


524  GENERAL     CONCLUSION. 

what  is  the  present  curse,  it  casts  also  a  fainter  but  still  most 
precious  ray  into  the  far  future  of  punishment  and  reward. 

We  pursue  not  this  subject  further.  Let  us  merely  remark 
that  apprehension  on  the  part  of  Christians  with  reference  to 
science  is,  in  all  respects,  causeless,  unreasonable,  and  absurd. 
To  suppose  that  truth  and  God  can  be  severed,  is  blasphemy. 
To  refuse  to  accept  the  ascertained  doctrines  of  science  on  be- 
half of  revelation,  is  to  cut  away  the  foundation  in  order  to 
save  the  house.  The  attitude  of  Christians  toward  science 
should  be  that  of  calm  and  earnest  waiting.  The  Word  of 
God  stands  on  its  own  basis ;  its  foot  on  the  rock  foundations 
of  the  earth,  its  head  reaching  unto  heaven.  Science,  too, 
stands  on  its  own  basis,  stable  as  the  faculties  by  which  men 
grasp  truth,  and  waxing  in  these  times  toward  colossal  dimen- 
sions. Even  now  it  were  surely  an  assertion  far  removed 
from  extravagance,  that  it  has  done  more  for  revelation  than  it 
has  even  seemed  to  do  against  it ;  pointing  back  to  an  original 
revelation  with  really  marvelous  distinctness,  and  showing  a  cor- 
respondence between  the  Bible's  theory  of  humanity  and  the 
truths  of  induction,  which  can  hardly,  by  any  man,  be  imputed 
to  unassisted  reason.  But  even  supposing  science  to  have  as 
yet  but  disturbed  that  rest  of  ignorance  which  she  can  not  yet 
recompose  into  the  peace  and  strength,  the  repose  and  majesty, 
of  perfect  knowledge,  can  not  Christians  wait  1  Truth  must 
cast  light  upon  truth !  Christianity  is  not  to  abandon  her  old 
position  in  the  van  of  civilization,  her  old  attitude  of  proud 
and  challenging  defiance  to  all  adversaries  ;  she  is  not  to  lag 
ignominiously  behind  the  race,  entreating  only  not  to  be  forced 
to  a  combat.  Science  is  yet  far  from  its  meridian.  It  may 
take  even  centuries  before  its  several  subordinate  lights  blend 
their  rays  to  cast  a  common  illumination ;  but  is  it  too  much 
to  predict  that,  when  science  shall  have  filled  its  orb,  it  will 


GENERAL     CONCLUSION.  525 

be  seen  by  all  nations,  that  tlic  Father  of  spirits  has  had  a 
higher  design  regarding  it  than  that  of  spreading  man's  table 
or  shortening  his  path,  and  that  it  casts  a  light,  to  reveal  and 
demonstrate,  over  every  pillar,  down  every  avenue  and  colon- 
nade, into  every  nook  and  crevice,  of  His  Word  ?  "  Wait  on 
the  Lord ;  be  of  good  courage,  and  He  shall  strengthen  thine 
heart :  wait,  I  say,  on  the  Lord." 

"  My  faith,"  says  De  Quincey  again,  "  my  faith  is,  that, 
though  a  great  man  may,  by  a  rare  possibility,  be  an  infidel, 
an  intellect  of  the  highest  order  must  build  upon  Christianity." 
Surely  it  is  a  reasonable  and  manly  faith.  Christianity  gives 
to  man  the  immovable  assurance  of  the  Word  of  the  eternal 
God  for  all  those  verities  which  are  his  glory  and  sublimity. 
While  atheism,  speaking  great  swelling  words,  would  have 
him  make  his  bed  in  the  dust,  and  would  spread  over  the  uni- 
verse that  wan  and  desolate  look  which  the  home  of  his  infancy 
wears  to  the  orphan  that  returns  from  his  father's  closing 
grave,  it  gives  him  the  certainty  of  a  spiritual  existence,  and  a 
Creating  Father.  And  it  shows  that  Father  manifesting  His 
love  in  a  manner  whose  very  greatness  wraps  it  in  mystery : 
He  is  a  God  not  far  away,  but  brought  nigh  in  Christ  Jesus. 
While  a  vaguely  aspiring  and  haughty  spiritualism  would  cast 
over  the  future  heavens  a  general  indefinite  illumination,  or  a 
sublime  but  fearful  darkness,  it  pictures  out  the  future  of  hu- 
manity, not,  indeed,  in  detailed  minuteness,  but  with  such  a 
defined  and  comprehensible  clearness,  that  hallowed  musing, 
aided  by  the  sovereign  imagination  in  its  highest  mood,  may 
clearly  distinguish  certain  of  its  great  features,  may  breathe 
the  unbroken  serenity  of  the  cloudless  light,  and  gaze  reverent 
on  the  fadeless  crown.     It  can  indicate,  though  faintly, 

"  Those  high  offices  that  suit 
The  full-grown  energies  of  heaven ;" 


626  GENERAL     CONCLUSION. 

it  can  guarantee  the  eternity  of  friendship,  and  of  that  love 
which  is  the  friendship  of  spirits.  It  opens  up,  also,  the  pros- 
pect of  an  inspiring  futurity  for  earth ;  it  sheds  an  auroral 
splendor  over  even  the  terrestrial  destiny  of  man.  We  allude 
not  now  to  the  millennial  epoch,  irreversible  as  the  promise 
of  such  an  epoch  is.  We  refer  to  the  power  of  Christianity 
to  develop  and  ennoble  the  whole  character  of  man ;  and  this 
grand  peculiarity  it  has,  that  it  makes  this  development  and 
this  ennobling  sacred  duties^  that  it  tells  a  man  that  neither  his 
faculties  nor  their  sphere  of  operation  are  his,  that  he  has  to 
subdue  the  whole  kingdom,  and  cultivate  the  whole  garden  of 
his  soul  for  God,  and  must  not  rest,  save  in  the  peace  that  is 
the  music  of  work,  until  the  limits  also  of  God's  outer  king- 
dom of  the  world  inclose  the  whole  earth.  Where  faith  is 
firm,  it  must  impart  a  steadfastness,  an  earnest  composm^e,  a 
dignity,  to  the  whole  man.  A  man  must  be  affected  by  his 
sense  of  his  position  and  responsibilities :  he  assuredly,  what- 
ever his  abilities,  and  whatever  his  sphere,  who  knows  himself 
to  be  a  soldier  in  God's  army,  will  possess  elements  of  strength 
and  contentment  that  will  distinguish  him  among  men.  Shall 
we  not  agree  with  these  words  of  Edwards  1 — "  Now,  if  such 
things  are  enthusiasm,  and  the  fruits  of  a  distempered  brain, 
let  my  brain  be  evermore  possessed  of  the  happy  distemper ! 
If  this  be  distraction,  I  pray  God  that  the  world  of  mankind 
may  be  all  seized  with  this  benign,  meek,  beneficent,  beatifical, 
glorious  distraction !" 

Christianity  can  at  least,  and  surely  with  no  need  of  argu- 
ment, afiirm  that  it  possesses  a  practical  worth  and  power  su- 
perior to  that  of  any  other  system.  The  idea  of  world-history 
is  not  philosophy  but  faith.  It  is  an  old  doctrine,  which  yet, 
like  the  forgetting  of  it,  must  ever  be  new,  that  to  demonstrate 
and  promulgate  a  truth  is  not  to  enforce  it :  to  establish  it  in 


GENERAL    CONCLUSION.  527 

the  heart  and  life  of  man,  to  set  it  by  the  plowman  in  the 
furrow,  with  the  sailor  on  the  ocean,  with  the  artizan  in  the 
workshoi?,  by  the  household  fire,  and  in  the  brawling  market- 
place, it  must  have  some  power  of  laying  its  hand  on  the  in- 
stincts that  lie  deep  and  half-conscious  in  the  bosom.  The 
religious  instinct  is  perhaps  the  deepest  and  most  powerful  of 
all ;  no  agency  will  produce  a  great  impression,  or  effect  a  per- 
manent lodgment  in  the  world,  that  admits  not  of  being  leagued 
with  it ;  and  if  it  has  now  become  a  pre-eminent  duty  of  the 
race  to  unite  science  and  general  education  with  religion,  it 
may  be  argued,  that  if  the  race  is  really  to  bestir  itself  to  ef- 
fect its  thorough  education,  education  must  come  under  the 
sanction  and  with  the  enforcement  of  religion.  Neither  must 
be  left  to  stand  alone.  A  people  with  the  religious  instinct 
strongly  developed,  yet  all  unenlightened  by  education,  is  like 
a  giant  smitten  blind,  that  rushes  wildly  on,  impelled  by  some 
resistless  force,  but  toward  no  definite  or  noble  goal ;  an  en- 
lightened, an  educated  nation,  without  religion,  is  like  a  skele- 
ton bearing  a  lamp,  it  has  light  but  not  force.  And  if  a 
superstitious  nation,  spreading  its  religion  at  the  sword-point, 
or  burning  imaginary  devotees  of  the  prince  of  darkness,  is  a 
sad  and  dismal  spectacle,  it  yet  appears  to  us  to  have  elements 
of  real  life  and  human  strength  with  which  we  can  sympathize; 
■while  we  find  something  to  excite  an  utter  loathing,  in  the 
aspect  of  a  nation,  where  there  is  no  earnestness  above  that  of 
the  market-place,  no  temple  more  sacred  than  the  studio,  and 
life  has  become  one  immeasurable  galvanic  simper  of  theatri- 
cality and  art.  And  let  it  once  more  be  called  to  mind,  that 
superstition  or  licentiousness  will  never  be  long  asleep.  On 
the  deck  of  the  vessel  they  may  be  dancing  to  soft  artistic  mu- 
sic, or  rejoicing  in  the  dainties  of  a  scientific  luxury,  but  mean- 
while the  fire  of  superstition  is  smoldering  in  the  hold,  erewhile 


528  GENERAL     CONCLUSION. 

to  wrap  it  in  flames,  or  the  ship  draws  near  some  endless  bank 
of  fucus  and  sea-weed,  into  which  when  it  once  sails  it  makes 
no  further  progress,  but  rots  away  amid  foul  odors,  on  a  sea 
where  no  wind  eyer  blows. 


THE    END, 


!.\ 


Theological  Semmary-Speer 


iWi 


012  01004  0717 


